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March 29

Census nosiness

I just filled in the UK census, and was puzzled by one pair of questions: why do they want to know the name and address of the organization that employs me? Does this mean that statistics will be kept for every business in the UK, however small? Will those statistics be published, so that I can see how many people work(ed) for the corner grocery store, and doesn't that seem very useful for tax enforcement, and not at all useful for statisticians? What's the ostensible purpose of the question? 213.122.2.47 (talk) 07:35, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

The address might be used for working out how far people live from their workplace (which might be useful when considering transport plans, etc.). That doesn't explain the name, though. Proteus (Talk) 07:51, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

The report here says: "The address and postcode of the employer is one of a number of questions contained in the census questionnaire about jobs, place of work, hours of employment and methods of travel to work. Answers to these questions help to build a profile of the economy of England and Wales and provide the foundation for other labour market and economic statistics published by ONS..... As well as underpinning the planning of public services, census statistics are also used extensively by the private sector. Information on such things as the skill and age profile of the workforce and where people live can help businesses to decide where to place new offices, factories and other places of work and what training they need provide for their employees." All individual forms are confidential, but the results will be aggregated to provide statistical information by location and by business type - not for individual businesses. Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:29, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

By door number and business type, by the sound of it? 213.122.57.127 (talk) 08:53, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

The work postcode is extremely useful to researchers of all kinds. Without it there would be no travel to work statistics. The industry that your employer is operating in is also crucial for knowing the mix of industries in each local area. What ONS says about business planning is also true, although it may be useful to note that it is not just ONS that crunches the information. There are numerous consultancies, large and small, that use Census data to model local economic development. Businesses can buy the info in to assist with planning; larger businesses contract with consultancies to do that while it is filtered to smaller businesses through local authorities, HMRC, chambers of commerce, business associations etc. The individual information is never passed on to HMRC but aggregate information is publicly available and can be used by anyone. So if the Census shows your town has hundreds of people working in construction but no construction businesses are registered for tax, HMRC might decide to send a team of inspectors to have a look around. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:00, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

So, why do they ask for the name and full address, rather than the postcode? Is the excess information thrown away? 213.122.57.127 (talk) 09:05, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Thrown away? Ha. Forms are kept for 100 years then made available to the public. Don't forget, you can use the street name to check if the respondent has made a mistake in the postcode. That's the sort of thing they will be doing for the next 18 months before they are ready to publish the first tables of figures. Not by hand, by computer algorithms. They cross-check against the last census, against the electoral register, against the credit reference agencies' data. Oh, and by the way, the UK government maintains a database of UK businesses that is supposed to be comprehensive. It starts with VAT registrations, and records for small businesses not registered for VAT are being added now or in the near future. It uses the database to make the sample for the Annual Business Survey (which may have changed its name again, need to check and amend WP article). Governments in developed countries know a lot of stuff. Assume they know more or less everything. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:16, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, they already know the names of all employers and whom they employ from Tax & NI returns. They already know extensive information about every person under 20 who has been in the state education system. In the past, information was seldom shared between different arms of government, but this is all changing. Dbfirs 10:35, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Not just people under 20. Individual records go back more than 15 years for schools, colleges, and universities. Our health records are also held. These days it is easy to combine records from different sources. The government agencies work with external bodies to develop their data systems. Nevertheless, there are some limits. Data sharing and security protocols are applied more strictly after the headline cases of databases left in taxis. Most of this can be found out by enquiring of government departments but I think most people would be shocked to know how much info is held on them by how many different bodies. The Census is the most secure and least problematic. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:12, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I probably should have said under 25. It is only in the last ten years or so that the Government has forced schools to use unique identifiers (UPNs) for pupils and to submit data electronically to their database. Dbfirs 20:21, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

How do they help an area with high unemployment? Do they really reward businesses for opening up shop there, or do they tear down the neighborhood to make room for a car park for the local stadium? (The latter being Chicago's preferred response, for example...) Wnt (talk) 00:32, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

It could be either, or neither. Authorities - central government, local government, and others - use census and other statistical information to develop policies towards an area - such as land use planning, or economic development strategies - that they consider appropriate, depending on the circumstances. Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:27, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Professing and believing within Catholicism

I vaguely recall that within Roman Catholicism there is a meaningful distinction made between the two concepts, to the effect that a Catholic is required to profess certain doctrines, but technically he is not required to believe them. Or perhaps he is supposed to do both, but he is "more required" to profess a doctrine than to inwardly believe it. This is my very fragmentary recollection, and the reality is probably somewhat different. Can anyone clarify the point, or direct me to a source of more information on this particular distinction, and perhaps to critical discussions of the issue? LANTZY^TALK 11:26, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, attempted indoctrination by Roman Catholic church performed on me has told me that one has to profess and believe in the God. To claim belief but not truly hold it in your heart is a sin much like the fact that belief in God will save you from hell even if you are not baptised into the church and you can be forgiven your sin if you truly confess and regret it internally, but don't have the means to go to proper Confession at the moment. True belief is necessary for got to recognise you anything less is not a guarantee. What you do need to profess openly is rejection of sin (after every Confession), rejection of devil during marriage ceremony, baptism and few other ceremonies (godparents and parents on the behalf of an infant) and core set of beliefs known as Apostles' Creed which are recited on every mass and succinctly summarise the basics of the Roman Catholic belief. Melmann^(talk) 12:38, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Philosophical Defense of General Resurrection

Hello. Can anyone here point me to a rigorous philosophical defense of general resurrection as preached by the Catholic Church vis-a-vis resurrection? Please understand that I am only referring to the philophical arguments, not those discussing whether or not it is a biblical teaching or not, or whether or not it is more just than or as just as reincarnation. In particular, I am looking for treatment of questions such as "how can that which has a beginning be without an end?" That is, how something can be "immortal" but not "eternal". I asked for a "rigorous" defense because I have seen many so far and all of them touch issues which are settled as far as I am concerned, and their reasoning is misinformed or incomplete. Please do not hesitate to recommend a complex or highly theoretical work, I have a decent grasp of the different subjects in Western philosophy, and I am prepared to do the hard work to understand it fully. Please just let me know which is the strongest defense in this regard that you know of. Many thanks, ReluctantPhilosopher (talk) 12:18, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

What are you looking for, exactly? In the words of the old Catholic Encyclopedia (which isn't always in conformity with teaching) "The general resurrection can hardly be proved from reason, though we may show its congruity." While one can carry out philosophical arguments about it's necessity, any rigorous defence is ultimately going to come down to the Bible, Holy Tradition and the Church's teaching: it's not something that's derivable outside that context. Having said that, if nobody has a better recommendation you might want to look up the various works of the Early Church Fathers cited in that article (under Tradition), since I expect some of them to have provided a thorough treatment. 86.164.69.241 (talk) 13:45, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for replying. I am aware of a number of philosophical problems with resurrection, such as those recounted here:[1] and here:[2], besides others that I am aware of. I think these objections present challenges, and that reincarnation presents a a more coherent account in comparison. I wished to know if someone, preferably someone defending the Catholic doctrine, had offered a detailed treatment of the issues. But your answer is very useful too, I just wanted to know what are the strongest defenses that people know of. --ReluctantPhilosopher (talk) 14:45, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I should also note (and I wish I could be more helpful) that the reason it is relatively hard to find a detailed philosophical treatment of this from the Catholic perspective, is because the Catholic Church doesn't really think the details are terribly important. Catholicism doesn't go quite as far as the Orthodox churches in terms of "It's a mystery, and the details aren't important", but the afterlife and the end of the world are topics it doesn't think yield or need a lot of detail. After all, what difference does it make to your actions today? We 'know' (based on Jesus's words) that existence in Heaven is not really comparable to existence on Earth, for example, so further extrapolating isn't really possible. If you know none of the old rules apply, but don't know the new rules, how can you meaningfully say what is and isn't possible? 86.164.69.241 (talk) 17:17, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I think what you are saying makes eminent sense. However, I was still looking for one because the Catholic Church, in the present age, presents itself as one that extensively depends on reason and community tradition (and reasoning within that community) in the formation of its beliefs and practices, besides the scripture itself. Moreover, I have come across defenses of a logical nature presented of general resurrection, and criticisms offered of reincarnation from the Catholic point of view, just not ones that seemed very convincing. --ReluctantPhilosopher (talk) 18:49, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Formal term for an "it's your word against his" situation

I am trying to express a negotiation situation wherein two sides both have limited information about each other, and make mutually unverifiable claims, with no objective evidence nor intermediary (i.e., a witness), such as when one says "it's your word against his". But this formulation lacks the requisite elegance (i.e., of the conceptual sort). Grateful for any ideas as to whether there is a formal and more elegant term, in law or logic or some other field, for such a situation. --Nicsilo (talk) 15:55, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

A specific instance of this is "He said, she said", which is a nice and more-elegant shorthand for the whole thing (except for your "limited information" requirement), but has sexual overtones. Our He said, she said article actually refers the reader to argument, but the desired meaning of "argument" is over at argument (disambiguation), which points the reader to disagreement, which is a redirect to controversy, which doesn't really address the topic. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:20, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

"One's word against another's" I think is intended to indicate a lack of third party or verifiable evidence. In a legal context, you can say a suit is "your word against mine" if there are no (or few) other witnesses available, and no (or few) documentary evidence available. Perhaps it can be expressed as "lack of external evidence"? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:18, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I guess there may not be an actual name for such a situation. Perhaps game theory has some answers, so I'll look at it from that angle. --Nicsilo (talk) 15:51, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I believe "hearsay" may cover it. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 18:39, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Hearsay is evidence which a witness received in a manner other than by direct perception. If a witness says "John told me he killed her", that's hearsay. It's not quite the same as what Nicsilo is asking for I think. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:46, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

It would be contentious, or contention. 92.15.1.33 (talk) 19:18, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Picture of Emperor Gaozu of Later Jin

What is the source of the image at this site? If the source is PD, is this pic? If this pic is not PD, does it qualify under WP's fair use policy? Thanks Kayau Voting IS evil 16:18, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

If the source is PD (and it certainly looks like it's old enough to be) then a faithful reproduction of it is of course PD. No clues in the text about the source of the pic though. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:16, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

A faithful reproduction of a Public Domain image is in the Public Domain In the United States (Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.). In other nations, it is less clear. In particular, the situation in the UK is somewhat murky right now. See [3] for some of the issues. The position of the Wikimedia foundation has been that US law is the only law that needs to be followed in this regard (in most instances on Wikimedia Commons, both the law in the U.S. and the law in the source country must be followed). Buddy431 (talk) 02:53, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

The source country is obviously the PRC, so I suppose the law of the PRC should be followed. In any case, googling the text returned no results, so I probably won't be able to find out if it's PD. Still, it may be interesting to note that as it calls Great Jin 'Later Jin', it's not contemporary. Assuming it's not PD, would it qualify for fair use? Thanks Kayau Voting IS evil 14:21, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Here's a slightly higher resolution of the same picture, found here. If I'm reading the Google Translation right, I think it was uploaded by this editor. If someone speaks Chinese, they could ask her where she got the photo from. And in general, for Wikipedia, it is the U.S. copyright law that's more important than that of the source country's. To qualify for fair use (WP:NFCC), you'd probably have to have a good reason to put it on a specific article where no free equivalents are possible (presumably Shi Jingtang). If looks like there are no pictures there, so it might qualify. You'd be better asking at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. Buddy431 (talk) 17:39, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Buddy431. :) There seems to be another old-looking picture of Shi and 2 variants of it, so I'll let the post stay here for another day in case someone recognises its source. If not, I'll ask at the MCQ about both pics. Kayau Voting IS evil 09:49, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

How to judge parents?

Is there a scale to judge parents? Obviously, not getting sneakers for $200 is not a blatant case of abuse, and on the other extreme, sexual abusing your children will always get you a 0 as parent. But how to grade the cases between these two poles? 212.169.190.250 (talk) 16:48, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Not to dodge the question, but judge them for what purpose?

I think that makes a difference. If you're doing some sort of scientific study and you need to grade parents on their 'fitness' (so you can compare your test group and your control group) you're going to a very specific criterion.

But other than that, it's difficult to imagine a good 'ranking' scale, except perhaps, how happy or successful the children are when they grow up. (Even then, which is better? Successful but not happy? or vice-versa?) APL (talk) 17:00, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, judging parents might be interesting for social workers or psychologists coaching parents to be better parents. Judging might sound as a too strong of a term. Evaluating is just as good here. I'm sure that happiness - which is partially genetic - is not an issue here, nor success - which is equally determined by factors beyond parents' control. 212.169.190.250 (talk) 17:37, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

At a first step, you'll have to define what a "good parent" is. What obligations do they have? Should be judge them by outcome or by intention? Should be pardon mentally ill parents or drug users? Excluding the obviously criminal, I see little chances of reaching a conclusion. Family psychologist could, however, still work on the relationship. Quest09 (talk) 17:49, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

One might also consider the happiness (or success, or whatever) of the children right at the moment, rather than concentrating on outcome. Does the influence of one's parents abruptly end when one reaches whatever the age of adulthood is? Is it unimportant how awful an experience a child has for those 18 or 21 or however many years, provided the emerging adult is in some sense "good"? Besides this, rather than attempting an objective assessment, one could ask the child to rate the parent by whatever criteria the child thinks are important, which of course will not always be the same. One child's good parent might not seem a good parent to another child. 81.131.66.235 (talk) 23:56, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

A ranking system like you describe only works if you can meaningfully say, for any two parents, A and B that either "A is a better parent than B", "B is a better parent than A" or "A and B are equally good parents". That clearly isn't the case. Consider a case where A is very caring and loving but can't hold down a good job so A's children have to go without things their friends have and B doesn't pay much attention to their children, but works hard so they never have to go without. Clearly, A is a better parent in one way and B is a better parent in another. You would need to decide whether being caring and loving or being able to financially support your children is more important, and you can't really decide that. They are obviously both important. Trying to quantify it will get you no-where. --Tango (talk) 19:17, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Everyone is assuming that no one studies this stuff or attempts to quantify what good parenting is. That's bullshit. The above people make it sound like its some crapshoot; that there is nothing at all to say that some actions people take make them better parents and some actions make them worse parents. There are scads of studies which clearly show high correlations between child outcomes and parental actions. The Wikipedia articles Parenting and Parenting styles which give a start. If someone wanted to do some research outside of Wikipedia, one could find oodles of studies which show what being a good parent takes. --Jayron32 19:24, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Of course there are studies into parenting, but they are of a qualitative nature, not a quantitive one. --Tango (talk) 21:27, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Nonsense, there are hundreds of quantitative studies regarding parenting, such as XXX% of parents that raise their kids a certain way end up with children who have a certain outcome. Those studies place hard numbers for the kinds of parenting that produce specific outcomes in children; i.e. studies on the effects of child sexual abuse regarding the outcomes for the abused children (with facts and figures), or maybe effects of parental involvement on student test scores (a number, mind you). There are LOTS of quantitative studies on what parents should do to be good parents, and what they should not do lest they be bad parents. It isn't just "kids turn out good or bad, and we have no idea how the parents figure into it". --Jayron32 21:54, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Teachers judge parents all the time, even before they meet them. HiLo48 (talk) 19:32, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

You are actually referencing the primary metric for measuring the quality of a parent - the children. The assumption is that good parents produce good children and bad parents produce bad children. -- kainaw™ 19:35, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Well in nature vs nurture, parents are responsible for both the nature (genetics) and the nurture (their parenting). Googlemeister (talk) 19:45, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, a strong correlation would normally exist. HiLo48 (talk) 19:47, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Does a scale exist for grading children? Obviously there are school grades, but do those reflect whatever kind of value the OP is interested in? Even if they reflected general moral worth, which they don't, is it good to attempt to measure people's absolute worth, outside of context? Seems a silly idea, and unpleasant. 81.131.66.235 (talk) 23:49, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

I think that murdering the children would rate even lower than sexual abuse. And then there could be things worse than murder, like lifelong torture followed by murder. StuRat (talk) 20:50, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

So that would make This guy a particularly bad parent... --Jayron32 21:48, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

The problem with trying to analyze this kind of thing quantitatively like Jayron32 says is determining what is causation and what is mere correlation. For example, I saw a public service announcement telling parents to eat dinner with their kids, citing some study that said that kids who eat dinner with their parents are less likely to do all kinds of bad stuff like illegal drugs. But that doesn't mean that the exact act of eating pizza with Junior makes him a better kid. Rather, it's probable that the parents who eat with their kids every day are more involved in their kids' lives all around. They're also probably more likely to be better-educated and higher-income than people who don't eat with their kids (because they're working the late shift at Wal-Mart, or whatever), and those factors are probably more-closely linked to kids' well-being than anything else you can measure statistically. The fact is, while there are certainly many ways not to raise children -- being physically or emotionally abusive or neglectful, for example -- there's not one right way to do so. Amy Chua's daughter seems to have turned out OK so far; so have Benjamin Spock's kids (a rumor that one committed suicide is untrue). Suffice to say Chua and Spock raised their children rather differently. Of course, if it really doesn't matter whether one follows the Chua or Spock school of child-rearing, following the former path seems a bit cruel. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:49, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

You can isolate for all of that, however. You can say "OK, we're only going to look at low-income parents who work evening jobs, and see what they do differently, and see what has a negative or positive impact on their children in some measurable way (say, by looking at test scores, children in trouble with the law, adult incarceration rates, attendance at secondary education, whatever metric you use to look at the children)." Such studies can actually be very insightful, because they can show ways in which parents can have a positive effect, even in highly disadvantaged situations. --Jayron32 03:09, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

It depends on the variable. With something like the presence of lead paint, it's fairly straightforward to draw a relationship between cause and effect. You can factor out income, ethnicity, parents' educational attainment, the absence of one parent, etc. from a comparison of kids who are and those who are not exposed to lead paint in their homes. If the 30% of the first group and 15% of the second group is involved in delinquency, you could reasonably draw a correlation between lead paint exposure and delinquency. But let's say someone finds that kids who play video games for two hours a day are more likely to get into legal trouble. No matter how many socioeconomic factors you adjust for, it's very difficult to prove that the video-game playing is a cause of the delinquency rather than another symptom of a root cause. Perhaps kids who play video games for 2 hours a day are more likely to have indifferent or neglectful parents. The only way to factor that out would be to do a detailed qualitative study of the family, and the more in-depth you look at each case, the fewer cases you can study. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 03:41, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Press conferences

I was watching William Hague and another address a press conference, entirely as one would expect in terms of the way it was carried out. As each question from the floor was being answered, the reporter who asked it would be furiously scribbling. Would it not be simpler to merely review the footage after? It did occur to me that it is something to do whilst the speaker is addressing both the questioner and the rest of the floor, but perhaps there is something more obvious? Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 16:56, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

It's a timing thing. This will probably have been a print journalist who had to file a story for the next day's paper. He hasn't got the time to review the footage, he just has to write his story as quickly as possible and send it to the paper. --Viennese Waltz 17:00, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

As someone who used an audio-recorder to take notes in school, I can tell you that even with a tape, it's very useful to get down the key bullet-points on paper. If you're in a hurry (and I assume that reporters almost always are) trying to find the one good quote in two hours of tape is an ordeal. APL (talk) 17:05, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Does anyone use shorthand any more? 92.29.112.51 (talk) 19:05, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Certainly they do. The "furious scribbling" described by the OP could well have been shorthand. --Viennese Waltz 19:07, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Something else that sometimes happens is that the speaker reveals some info during the press conference that then makes the reporter think of a follow-up question, which they quickly scribble down, in the hope that they will be called upon. StuRat (talk) 20:46, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Is this what Highlander (film) and the spin-off TV shows were about? I haven't seen any of them. 75.57.242.120 (talk) 07:03, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

The answer to that is such a strong "no" (IMHO) that I am wondering if you meant to post this somewhere else. --Dweller (talk) 10:07, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Presumably the "POV of an immortal" section above. Proteus (Talk) 07:42, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

As a print reporter, I suspect Viennese Waltz was probably accurate. I often cover news conferences side-by-side with television reporters, and I take very detailed notes. Because the cameras belong to someone else, I don't even have access to the video footage. All I have are my notes. And from experience, I can say that written notes are faster than using a portable audio recorder. ... Also, regarding shorthand, many reporters use a form of shorthand, but it is not a classic system (like Gregg shorthand or something. My shorthand is of my own invention, and I doubt anyone else could decipher it. It's a combination of abbreviations, phonetic transcriptions, symbols and pictograms. I didn't set out to invent it; it just evolved. — Michael J 14:02, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

March 30

No gas day

Every so often, when the price of gasoline spikes, people here in the States will get the idea that there should be a day when none of us buy gas. And to that end, they send notices around social networks to their friends. They do this under the pretense that it will "send a message" or something to that effect. Is there any evidence that these No Gas days actually do anything? Financially or politically?

As for the financial aspect, I would think that it has zero effect since you're just offsetting which day you buy your gas on.

As for politically, again, I don't see it making a difference. It's not as if politicians are blind to the fact that gas prices have gone up.

BTW, no, we have no article on No gas day.

Thanks, Dismas|^(talk) 00:34, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

So few people actually participate, it has zero effect. Secondly, even with 100% participation it would have zero effect, since all those people who participate either fill up their tank a day early (so they don't run dry that day) or some time afterwards; in the end the same amount of gasoline will be sold. If we really want to stick it to the oil companies, we'll all go out and sell our giant, gas-guzzling SUVs, buy fuel efficient hybrids or full electrics, and start demanding better public transportation and better urban planning to make use of it. Or we won't, and instead will all continue making symbolic one-day boycotts that have no effect while oil company executives smoke giant cuban cigars rolled in 100 dollar bills and blow the smoke in our faces. --Jayron32 02:58, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

[This article] seems to indicate that your friendly state and federal governments are profiting almost as much, or as much, or more than the oil companies are... for their own product. Kingsfold (Quack quack!) 16:23, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Arguably they have a negative effect on real change — see slacktivism. People get the "I am doing something" feeling for nothing, and don't pursue real change. --Mr.98 (talk) 03:23, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. I sometimes wonder if oil companies aren't behind such efforts, reasoning that everyone will get out their anger against them in this ineffectual way, rather than demanding anti-gouging laws from politicians, etc. StuRat (talk) 06:16, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I think the idea of no gas day is to not use any gas, not just refrain from buying it. So for example you would use your bike instead of your car to get to work that day, which would actually save some gas. 75.57.242.120 (talk) 07:07, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't know if this link will work but this effort has been showing up on my FB account for a few days now. Apparently a few of my friends are supporters of it. Anyway, the text of the soapboxing only mentions refraining from driving once in the entire description of the 'event'. For the most part it prattles on about showing the oil companies that the organizers and supporters are sick and tired, yada yada... Dismas|^(talk) 09:04, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

This has been covered by Snopes, with the nice comment that 'all [schemes of this type] are reminders that "protest" schemes that don't cost the participants any inconvenience, hardship, or money remain the most popular, despite their ineffectiveness.' AndrewWTaylor (talk) 11:39, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I'd looked but didn't find anything. Dismas|^(talk) 13:52, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Are there any federal agencies that'll pay off all my college bills, like the military, but for anyone who's medically disqualified from it?

I'm referring to the US military. Because I have anxiety and medications, I wouldn't get to join them.

However, are there any other federal agencies that I can join and still get college-paying benefits like the military? Please link them. Thanks. --98.190.13.3 (talk) 04:35, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country. --JFK

The Peace Corps allows you to defer student loan payments, and also offers some financial assistance for graduate studies (Masters and Doctorate degrees), see [4]. AmeriCorps offers an educational stipend which can be used to pay tuition at universities following your service, see [5]. Teach For America and other related state-level programs offer tuition reimbursement for people who make a commitment to teach in a disadvantaged community for some number of years (usually 2-3). Maybe one of those can help. --Jayron32 04:46, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Peace Corps only selects 1/3 of their applicants. I doubt I'd stand a chance. I don't know how selective Americorps is (provide that info please?) As for teaching, based on the way education is here, I'd rather teach overseas.

Thanks for the tips. Any more? --98.190.13.3 (talk) 04:49, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

If you pursue a teaching career with your degree, many states offer programs to pay off your student loans. The caveat being you must spend X years teaching in that state once you complete your degree & teaching program. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 19:12, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Which English-speaking countries let us go to college for free?

I know the UK subsidizes it at £3100/year, but due to their budget woes, that's probably about to go.

What other countries would have English-speaking universities that will not charge tuition and fees thanks to their wonderful government? Wherever it is, I MUST go there. Thank you. --98.190.13.3 (talk) 04:36, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Of course, you know that the education is not for free, right? The universities in question still have expenses which come out of taxes. So you still pay for it, though it is called something different (in this case a tax, rather than tuition), but in the end TANSTAAFL... --Jayron32 04:38, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

At least the taxes are through fuel and sales. I might get a motor scooter or take public transport, which might get me ahead in the long run. Moreover, if the VATs make us pay taxes out the nose, then at least I can find cheaper alternatives to what I'm looking for in most circumstances. You see, in this way, I'd have more control than by the tuition-based system back in America. That is all the more reason why I hope to attend an English-speaking college overseas for a lesser cost. --98.190.13.3 (talk) 04:52, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

What do you mean by "college"? That word has diverse meanings across the world. HiLo48 (talk) 04:41, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I presume he means "univeristy (post-secondary)" education, given that he asks, and I quote (bold mine) "English-speaking universities". --Jayron32 04:47, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Depending on how you define free, Australia provides it - in the sense that you effectively gain a loan from the government to be paid back once your income gets over a certain threshold via your taxes. See Tertiary education fees in Australia. You also find that HECS scholarships, where the debt is covered by the university, are available for postgraduate work in many universities. That said, true private universities, such as Bond University, also exist, and while the HECS scheme is better than full-fee paying, it isn't the same as free. - Bilby (talk) 04:59, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Well then, I suppose I'll have to visit the Office of International Programs at Kansas State University and speak to them about attending a university in Australia. Which one would you recommend and why? I suppose I'll even finish my schooling there, as a matter of fact. --70.179.169.115 (talk) 01:59, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Scotland is not free but they seem to offer a good deal, plus it's (mostly) a beautiful country.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 09:34, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Maastricht University in the Netherlands teaches many courses in English and is currently recruiting students from the UK. You may need to be an EU resident to benefit from the very low fees. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:42, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't think you need worry too much about educational debts in England - you only pay them back when your income is high enough, and in any case it is completely cancelled when you reach 51 (an extremely long way off, I know). So if you have a low income over your career, you get free education. 92.15.1.33 (talk) 19:26, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Well then, I suppose I'll have to visit the Office of International Programs at Kansas State University and speak to them about attending a university in the UK. Which one would you recommend and why? I suppose I'll even finish my schooling there, as a matter of fact. --70.179.169.115 (talk) 01:59, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

You might keep in mind that foreigners are seldom granted the same fees as citizens. Bielle (talk) 02:07, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. As you are a US citizen apparently, the UK universities will welcome you with open arms - and your money with open accounts! Even in the good old days over 30 years ago when I did my degree for free, foreign students were charged thousands of pounds a year for the privilege of receiving a British education. The thing about student loans in the UK only applies to UK citizens. I'm not sure what the position for loans is for EU citizens, except that UK institutions have to treat them exactly as they would UK students as far as fees go. So it looks like you're out of luck and might as well bite the bullet and pay up where you are!--TammyMoet (talk) 07:44, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Then where would I get a free education, even though I was born as a US citizen?

What are the processes to become an Australian citizen then? I was informed by an old friend that to get free education in Australia, I'd need to be their citizen. I wouldn't mind having multiple citizenships. (It could look good on a resume anyway.)

Other than that, where would I get to enter college for free with the citizenship I have now? Would any English-speaking university in the world let an American citizen study for free? _{With the $14T federal deficit, quantitative easing, and out-of-control printing of money, hyperinflation is just around the corner so I had better flee before I get caught up in the fallout! According to List of countries by HDI, Australia is the English-speaking nation with the highest HDI, in a close second only to Norway. Even though we're in 4th now, I'm afraid it'll slip its position by a landslide before the decade is even half-over.} —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.179.169.115 (talk) 09:25, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

You need to live in Australia for 5 years minimum before you can become a citizen. --09:37, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Then will the free tuition also apply to permanent residents? If not, would there be a partial subsidy of some type? --70.179.169.115 (talk) 10:24, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Since tertiary education isn't usually free in Australia even for citizens (Tertiary education fees in Australia) the answer to your first question would be an obvious no... I suggest you get better friends, just avoid causing them to hold grudges. You should BTW be aware if you don't have a job or any qualifications or much money or a special talent and aren't married to someone who is a citizen nor are you a refugee, qualifying for residency in any other country is going to be 'tricky' to say the least. Even as a fresh graduate qualifying for residency is generally going to be difficult (unless you have one of the aforementioned advantages instead) particularly for any developed countries. Nil Einne (talk) 17:43, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Isn't Wikiversity not good enough for you? 80.58.205.34 (talk) 10:48, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Not when I'm trying to earn credits for job eligibilities. But would Wikiversity have copied-and-pasted textbooks? --70.179.169.115 (talk) 11:00, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

United States Military Academies have free educations, but you have to commit to serve in the military after you graduate. Corvus cornix_talk 22:49, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Cooper Union --Nricardo (talk) 01:54, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

"Organic Atheism" -- or, have any atheist societies existed on a large scale in recorded history?

I'm an atheist, might as well get that out of the way. I'd also appreciate it if the axe-grinders sat this one out, as my question is purely one about history. Looking back over the 20th century, the Soviet Union, China, and Japan stand out to me as largely atheist societies. In the first, it was state-mandated and though vigorously enforced a strong religious undercurrent survived and (since the fall) has flourished in those lands. In the second, despite the government's official position, Buddhism, Daoism, and even a regulated form of Christianity have persisted. In the last, while very, very few citizens would be considered "religious", they nevertheless patronize a variety of Shinto temples, use Buddhist burial rights, and so on. Religion, it seems, has endured even in largely a-religious (or forcibly a-religious) societies, just as atheism has endured in highly religious cultures. And yet, by and large the theist humans are many, many times more numerous than the atheists. Which leads me presently to wonder if there have ever been any completely atheist cultures/societies in recorded history? This is a slippery slope to be sure, but I shall try to define it by requiring the complete absence of any supernatural beliefs whatsoever. The Masked Booby (talk) 05:12, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Just to make sure — in this question, do you use "atheist" and "atheism" to mean entirely non-religious? Some forms of Buddhism are atheistic in that they reject the existence of a deity, but obviously their adherents are not non-religious. Nyttend (talk) 05:36, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

It would have to be a pretty austere form of Buddhism, as boddhisatvas and belief in Nirvana or reincarnation would put you in my theist basket. Not sure what all is left after that. All life is suffering, be nice, and meditate? The Masked Booby (talk) 06:24, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

That's what I expected that you meant, but I wanted to make sure. If I understand rightly, atheistic Buddhists reject the concept of God or the gods, apparently thinking that their religious activities are related to non-divine supernatural activities. Nyttend (talk) 14:38, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Actually, probably there were "pre-theistic" societies in, say, early human cultures, that is societies where the concept of God or the Supernatural wasn't yet formed; these would be fully atheistic cultures. The formation of religion is one of those things that requires significant leisure time. When human society spent most of its time hunting buffalo and running from bears, there likely wasn't much time to ponder the hereafter. It would have been very early in human society, though, as there are clear indications that even neanderthals had as belief in an after life, given their burial practices. --Jayron32 05:37, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Burial practices would seem to disqualify most if not all, as you mentioned. The Masked Booby (talk) 06:24, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but there must have been some point in human society where they didn't bury their dead; i.e. dead people were just left where they lied, or perhaps there was some non-religious purely pragmatic burial methods, i.e. no one likes to hang around a stinky, rotten corpse. Those societies would have been purely pretheistic. --Jayron32 14:17, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I presume by culture/society you really mean "region" or "ethnic group", otherwise I could (annoyingly) say "sure, the Leeds Atheist Society is a society of atheists". I'd like to mention Inuit mythology - technically they are/were atheist, that is, not theist - but you appear to have ruled them out by barring all supernatural beliefs. Bah. 213.122.38.107 (talk) 05:43, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Your presumption is correct. I'll read up on Inuit Mythology, thank you. The Masked Booby (talk) 06:24, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Not directly answering your question, but have you seen Irreligion by country? The information there suggests that (depending on your definition and on the survey conducted) there may now be a majority of non-theists in countries as varied as Estonia and Vietnam. Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:21, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Just as an aside, and perhaps what you are getting at with this question, but one of the more dubious claims I have heard atheists make is that atheism is a "default state" — that you have to be taught religion to be religious. (I say this as an atheist who has spent considerable time with other atheists.) This has always struck me as silly. Specific religious belief is obviously taught — you can't intuit transubstantiation, for example. But religiosity as a whole, and the attribution of activities to the supernatural, seem quite hardwired on some level, and take considerable training to "unwire." Left to their own devices, people seem to come up with naturalistic religions spontaneously. Various studies have shown genetic components to religiosity as well (which holds open the irony that it is an evolved trait). None of which is a normative claim, of course — it doesn't prove in the slightest that religions are true in any way, or even that we require them today any more than we require our appendix. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:41, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't getting at anything. My own observations support your statement beginning with "But religiousity..." and I was curious if I had overlooked some society somewhere sometime. The Masked Booby (talk) 13:31, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Can you qualify "left to their own devices"? I doubt any human left entirely alone from (just before) the time they are capable of being influenced by anyone else would survive long enough to "come up with religion". Specifically, an infant will not survive without the intervention of someone (normally a mother) who may influence the child's thinking. Or are you referring to a self-sufficient and isolated group of people, none of whom have ever been exposed to religion, "coming up with" a religion of some sort? Mitch Ames (talk) 12:03, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

There are some rather interesting studies of people who have been raised entirely without language (e.g. completely deaf in places where there is no accommodation for that) who nonetheless, once they acquire some language, immediately know what the idea of "God" refers to — something larger than themselves, something tied up with why things work out the way they do, something that explains the unknown, etc. That's what I had in mind. I also note that, as the query points out, religion is one of those things which is something of a constant in human societies, even if the specific expression varies a huge amount. It's easy to see why that would be, of course — Levi Strauss went a long way to showing that even the most "primitive" animistic religions do a lot of social and cognitive work, and explain quite a lot from the perspective of the people inside of them. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:53, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

That immediately devolves into a chicken-and-egg situation, Mitch. The Masked Booby (talk) 13:31, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

One belief is that after Adam and Eve sinned true worship was infiltrated by Satan. Therefore all religion is a deviation from the original. 129.120.141.200 (talk) 12:49, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

"Hard-wired" seems an unnecessary stretch. No need to postulate an in-built theory of gods: you could just say that gods are the most obvious explanation of various peculiar phenomena for the completely ignorant to reach for - that a shallow investigation of the world suggests gods. "What mechanism could possibly be behind this?", thinks the early human (skipping past the part where he thinks "what's a mechanism?"). "What kind of things do I know of which are capable of causing and controlling complex effects? I know - it must be - some kind of other, invisible human!" 81.131.22.209 (talk) 15:07, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

What I mean by "hard wired" is, "our brains are set up so that this kind of explanation comes into it quite readily." That's all. I'm not saying we have a "religion part of the brain" or anything like that (though there are theories to that effect), or that religion was necessarily specifically selected for by evolution (it may be, as you imply, just something that comes with all of our pattern matching abilities). --Mr.98 (talk) 15:53, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh, OK, misunderstood, beg your pardon. 81.131.22.209 (talk) 16:12, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I haven't read all of the other responses here, but I can say conclusively that the human animal simply has religion ingrained into him. This has been my experience as previously both a non-religious and religious man, a man deeply interested in cultures and their religious expressions, and even through a sociology of religion class I took.

There may be exceptions, but humans will inevitably come to worship something - it's just in our nature. A great example is civil religion - even without a belief in a higher power, people come to exhibit decidedly religious characteristics toward an ideology. In the United States, people sing songs of allegiance and subservience while staring at a flag which represents a higher ideal (i.e., the US itself) - in a religious context, we call that worship (or, in a high church, hymns). In North Korea, they unfurl giant posters of their leader, and attribute godlike qualities to him (e.g., a supernatural birth or shooting 36 under-par on his first time ever golfing), while participating in long marches with pretty colors, etc. The allegiance to the country goes beyond a mere social cohesion for expedience's sake - there's a deep reverential quality that goes to the core of the human soul (however you define "soul", as being an illusion or actual thing).

Finally, I think you will find that atheist nations, at least in the west, are deeply unhappy, perhaps because they are shirking that god-given and/or evolution-given need to believe in a central higher power (I've yet to encounter even a polytheist religion that didn't have one guy at the top- though I could be wrong). IIRC, abortion/suicide/alcohol-abuse/etc. rates are depressingly high in Eastern Europe - List of countries by suicide rate certainly shows a rough correlation between irreligiosity and suicide, with the multicultural India as the major exception (perhaps the less concrete nature of Hinduism isn't as fulfilling as the rigidity of monotheistic or animistic religion? You'll notice I am not very politically correct in my scientific observations - I have a few more nasty scientific ideas to mete out if you should ask me). I don't think there can be any question that religion leads to someone being happier on average - whether you call it "ignorance is bliss" or "fulfilling a God-given hole in your life", it certainly exists IMHO. Magog the Ogre (talk) 15:10, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

PS. For a profoundly secular view of the evolutionary roots of religion, I recommend The Naked Ape. If you want a religious view, just ask me and I'll do a bit of research, as I'm sure more exist. Magog the Ogre (talk) 15:13, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

My suggestion (keeping it short) is that rather than say "it's just in our nature", we can say "it's just in nature", from the point of view of a human, that is, which is slightly simpler and doesn't entail explaining why our brains should play a mean, weird trick on us. By the way I've seen The Naked Ape parodied as The Mobile Mineral. It's reductionism. 81.131.22.209 (talk) 15:22, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Does the answer to the original question depend on whether you consider myth to be belief in the supernatural? Because anthropologists usually consider myth-making to be a human universal. I agree with them because it seems that trying to make sense of the world, looking for reasons and patterns, is an intrinsic part of what we are as a species. Science and religion, in that perspective, have a common origin. In pre-industrial societies, some questions can be answered through observation, e.g. "will there be a full moon tomorrow night?". And other questions call for a different kind of answer, e.g. "why does the moon have different phases?" It is only in recent centuries that we have tried to use observation and experiment to answer the second kind of question. Itsmejudith (talk) 15:44, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Judith brings up a good point. There's a difference between believing the Sun is carried across the sky on the back of a moose, and worshiping said moose. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 19:23, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

For an intelligent (albeit misinformed) observer it's not unreasonable to deduce: the moose carries the sun; I need the sun; therefore I'd better be nice to the moose because if I annoy him he may not bring the sun back. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:30, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

" ... myth-making to be a human universal [trait]." - Perhaps that might be more accurately worded as "hypothesis-making". I think that when we make up these "reasons" for things (be it celestial mechanics or a lunar-laden moose), they are not myths at the time. They only become myths after science knows them to be false. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:23, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Population for non-municipal settlements in Australia

Reading the article about Leigh Creek, South Australia, I was surprised to see that no population total is given, and obviously the Outback Areas Community Development Trust (OACDT), which functions as its LGA, isn't very helpful due to the fact that it covers the majority of the state. I notice that the latter article provides a population figure for Leigh Creek, but the source for this section is a map that says nothing about population. Is there any way to get official census population figures for Australian communities that aren't basically identical to one LGA or a group of them? Three further bits — (1) Forgive my confusion; I'm an American, so I may be misunderstanding something completely. (2) If I understand rightly, the census is a nationwide program, so I suspect that it would do its best to operate in a similar manner in all six states, or so I'd guess simply because that's the way the American census operates. (3) The OACDT article refers to communities such as Leigh Creek as "Proposed Unincorporated Area Districts", and this is backed up by the source that I linked above. Would such communities be similar to the concept of a census-designated place in the USA? I can't find relevant information in the source document. Nyttend (talk) 05:44, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

This probably won't help you, Nytttend, but the Outback Areas Community Development Trust has been replaced by the Outback Communities Authority, which seems to do essentially the same job. Our article ought at least to be updated.

I can confirm the Census is a nationwide data collection, and the same questions are asked everywhere on the same night. The Australian Bureau of Statistics runs the Census and has special arrangements to enable remote communities to participate. Census in Australia might answer some of your questions about how areas are classified.

The ABS is a friendly place - I used to work there and I like to think my legacy lives on :) - and they can help with any sort of enquiry about census or statistical issues generally. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 19:15, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Wang Jian

Who is the "Wang Jian" credited with writing many of the songs in Romance of the Three Kingdoms (TV series)? Is it the Tang poet? --Quadalpha (talk) 14:17, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

It can't be the Tang poet given that many of the songs credited to this Wang Jian are written in vernacular, not classical. A google search took me to this Baidu Zhidao thread, which says, amongst other bits copied and pasted from the web: 王健(1928—— )女歌词作家。北京人。天津河北师范学院音乐系肄业。1949年业于华北大学三部音乐科。长期在中国音协《歌曲》、《词刊》任编辑，为副编审。代表歌词作品有《绿叶对根的情意》、《历史的天空》、《生命的星》、《妈妈的小屋》、《小小的我》、《让世界充满爱》（合作）、《歌声与微笑》 、《我是小鼓手》等。

My rough translation: Wang Jian (born 1928), female lyricist, native of Beijing. STudied at the Hebei Normal School Faculty of Music in Tianjian, graduated in 1949 from the Music Department of the University of Northern China (III). Long term editor of the Song and Lyrics publications of the Chinese Music Association. A list of works follows, including 历史的天空 which appears in the Three Kingdoms TV series. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:58, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

General Assembly of the Organization of the Americas and Summit of the Americas

What are the differences between General Assembly and Summit of the Americas in Organization of the Americas? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.95.104.154 (talk) 14:57, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Have you tried the article on the Organization of American States and Summit of the Americas? You should find some answers there. As a rule, though, general assemblies of multilateral organizations are standing bodies that discuss an organization's policy orientations, membership, budget and human resources at the working level (i.e., no heads of state there, only lowly minions, and perhaps ambassadors and ministers). Summits, on the other hand, are meetings of heads of state that usually discuss very, very broad issues, get a lot of media coverage, at the end of which a declaration is issued that will usually have been previously discussed and agreed-upon at the working level. Bear in mind that not all multilateral organizations hold summits (only a few do, actually), but they all have a standing body such as a general assembly. --Nicsilo (talk) 16:17, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

when do companies get new stock options?

I already asked this once but didn't get an answer. When will Apple get stock options that expire later than January of 2013? Does no one know? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.182.29.153 (talk) 15:08, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

You are talking about LEAPS (long-term options). this site discussses some issues of these options. I quote the following, relevant item:

All new January expiring equity LEAPS are initially listed shortly following the expiration in either May, June, or July each year. The month that the LEAP is initially listed in is dependent upon the quarterly cycle of the option. Cycle 1 options January expiring LEAPS are listed after the expiration in May, cycle 2 after the expiration in June, and cycle 3 after the expiration in July.

Hence, by the middle of the year you will know if new Leaps have been issued for your stock. Pallida  Mors 19:48, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Archaeology

I know this is a very broad question but I would like to know, in general terms, the percentage of historical artifacts, structures, sites we have discovered and excavated out of the total number of artifacts, structures, sites there are estimated to be out there in the world.

More generally, is Archaeology a dwindling field where there is less and less to discover each year? Is it thought that at some point there will be nothing interesting left to find? TheFutureAwaits (talk) 15:38, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I've often wondered about this myself, but thinking about it now, it strikes me that there are at least three variables involved in the question which are very hand-wavy and philosophical:

• How far away is the past? (Consider industrial archeology. Is the past getting less distant?)
• How much of it is interesting? (Quantify that if you can!)
• How powerful is our ability to find out about it?

Then, you want to know whether our archeological power is outstripping the amount of currently interesting stuff remaining in whatever we currently call the past. It's a very slippery sort of question. If it's any comfort, though, I was reading recently about doggerland, and it seems that there's plenty of very ancient archeology safely (?) hidden under the sea, and in such abundance that it can be picked up accidentally by fishing trawlers. 81.131.22.209 (talk) 16:01, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Remember that as time passes more and more potential archaeological artifacts are created. Todays dumpster is tomorrows archaeological dig, and we have never produced more objects, structures and generally made a larger cultural imprint on the landscape than now. Archaeology can be about very recent things as well, for example there is industrial archaeology (ah, I see that is already mentioned above). --Saddhiyama (talk) 16:04, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it is possible to give a useful answer in general terms. For example, for tens of thousands of years humans made flint tools, and the flakes that get chipped off in that process are easily recognized by specialists, and exist in vast quantities in quite a number of places. To get a meaningful answer, you really have to specify a period of time you are interested in, and a level of structure a site needs to have in order to interest you. Looie496 (talk) 16:27, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Okay to be more specific then let's say I'm only interested in buildings from the Roman Empire. Is there any sense of how much is still out there to find in that category? TheFutureAwaits (talk) 16:39, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

There is a difference between a site being discovered and a site having been fully archeologically excavated. For example, in Jordan, both Gadara and Petra are significant Roman-era archeological sites which can be readily visited but of which only a small percentage has been excavated. There's work for archeologists for a long long time at those two places; there are many similar sites like that throughout the Roman world. There are probably relatively few completely undiscovered Roman sites, but there are a number of places where the Romans were present where it has been very difficult to conduct any serious archeological work for decades (e.g. Algeria, Lybia, Iraq...), so you never know. --Xuxl (talk) 17:33, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Even in Rome itself new discoveries are made every time a construction project that involves digging is undertaken. --Saddhiyama (talk) 18:12, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Much of the material used in Roman buildings was re-used by later builders - not necessarily in major buildings, but by later farmers and so forth in the local area. For example, material from the Roman buildings at Caerwent was used in building Chepstow Castle a few miles away and several hundred years later. Ghmyrtle (talk) 18:30, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Near my wife's hometown in northern Italy, they were digging a subway line and discovered an old Roman settlement. They had to halt construction while the archaeologists came in. From what I understand, it's a fairly common occurrence and often causes delays.Jasonberger (talk) 16:19, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

In the 19th century, famous "archeologists" like Heinrich Schliemann were basically treasure hunters and self promoters, of the Indiana Jones style, who would go to what they imagined was the site of some famous ancient city and hire workers to dig swiftly down through the layers built up over thousands of years looking for valuable baubles which could be exhibited in a museum. When they finished, all context was lost, and there was little left for future archeologists. Modern archeology goes to a mound which might be a historic site and carefully excavates a defined trench, or a square pit layer by layer, centimeter by centimeter, preserving exactly where each artifact was found, and doing carbon dating of charcoal. The generally do not clear the whole site (unless a superhighway is going through or a building is going up on the site). That way, future scientists with better gadgets will have something to study. Edison (talk) 18:20, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

For an example of relatively recent archaeological sites, read our article on the Irishtown Bend Archeological District in the US city of Cleveland, Ohio — the district's period of significance (the time when artifacts found there are seen as archaeologically important) starts in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Most archaeological sites in Ohio are Native American, but the people who left artifacts at this site were Irish immigrants. Nyttend (talk) 21:05, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Wait a minute... are you telling me that Archeology isn't about sneaking into mysterious old temples, swapping the crystal skull for a bag of sand and then getting chased by giant boulders until you fall into the pit of snakes? Well, that's no fun at all! Better to be a paleontologist (at least there you get to recreate dinosaurs from their DNA). Blueboar (talk) 22:32, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Double snark! (Now drilling into my piece of amber to extract dino DNA) Edison (talk) 04:35, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

See http://www.sandiegoarchaeology.org/askanarchaeologist.htm. -- Wavelength (talk) 00:04, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

There are archeologists who specialise in digging-up WWII aircraft[6]. Alansplodge (talk) 12:06, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Encyclopedic use(s) of "free election"

At Talk:Free election (Polish throne) we are having a discussion about how many encyclopedic uses the term free election gets. Another editor suggested I ask about it here, hence, the question. So far there is one certain use (the current free election (Polish throne)). We are discussing whether there are any other historical, accepted usages of the term, as well as whether the term free and fair election is encyclopedic and should have an article. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 15:50, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Why dosn't the BOE have a higher inflation target during recessions?

Why havnt the BOE/government(s) taken on board the theory of the economist Minsky (described in many places including Debunking Economics by Steve Keen, 2001, Chapter 11, pgs 253+, available to preview at Google Books), since it foresees and describes the current recession in the UK?

Minsky's theory

"Minsky argues that if the rate of inflation is high at the time of the crisis, then though the collapse of the boom causes investment to slump and economic growth to falter, rising cash flows rapidly enable the repayment of debt incurred during the boom. The economy can thus emerge from the crisis with diminished growth and high inflation, but few bankruptcies and a substained increase in liquidity. Thus though this course involves the twin 'bads' of inflation and low growth, it is a self-correcting mechanism in that a prolonged slump is is avoided..... If the rate of inflation is low at the time of crisis, then cash flows will remain inadequate relative to the debt structures in place. Firms whose interest bills exceed their cash flows will be forced to undertake extreme measures: they will have to sell assets, attempt to increase their cash flows at the expense of their competitors, or go bankrupt. In contrast to the inflationary course, all three classes of action tend to further depress the current price level, thus at least partially exacerbating the original balance.....The asset price deflation route is therefore not self-correcting but rather self-reinforcing, and is Minsky's explaination of a depression. ......A high rate of inflation during a crisis enables debts that were based on unrealistic expectations to be nonetheless validated, albeit over a longer period than planned and with far less real gain to investors. A low rate of inflation will mean that those debts cannot be met, with consequent domino effects even for investments that were not unrealistic.....This behaviour could well turn low inflation into deflation."

It will be interesting to read what the forthcoming 2011 edition has to say about current times. It would involve a political loss of face to revise the inflation target upwards, but it may have been done covertly already. Thanks 92.15.1.33 (talk) 20:08, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

This is not really a new idea -- John Maynard Keynes said similar things decades ago. The basic reason is that regardless of all such logic, people just simply hate inflation, because it makes their money have less value. The wealthiest people, who are the most influential, hate it the most. For the same reason, people instinctively are happy about deflation, because it allows their money to buy more, even though virtually all economists agree that deflation is devastating to economic growth. Looie496 (talk) 21:07, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I believe that surveys show that wealthy people actually have the most debt, so they ought in fact to welcome inflation as it would make the real value of the debt fall. The people who would suffer would be people whose income is mainly from bank interest on their capital, and there cannot be many of those. It is completely untrue that people like deflation - this means that the value of people's homes fall and the real value of their mortgages increases (a nasty double-whammee that wastes away people's hard-earnt lifetime savings/equity fast), and they are more likely to be made unemployed. These last three may account for the bad housing situation in the US. 92.15.1.33 (talk) 21:29, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

No, inflation causes stocks and bonds to lose value as well (bonds more than stocks). The only assets that protect against inflation are hard ones such as land and gold -- but putting wealth into those forms entails risks as well. Looie496 (talk) 00:01, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I do not think it is true that stocks lose value during inflation, since most companies borrow money to invest, and the real value of these debts would fall and therefore their equity rises. I cannot see why bonds would fall in nominal terms, perhaps you are getting mixed up with rises in interest rates. Edit: Minsky's theory itself suggests that the above would be good for stocks. 92.29.119.112 (talk) 10:02, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Normally bonds reflect the expectations regarding inflation. And there are inflation protected bonds too, which certainly do not suffer through a period of high inflation. 80.58.205.34 (talk) 10:44, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Let me respond to the previous two comments. First, the response of stocks to inflation is complex. If a stock pays a fixed dividend per share, then a rise in inflation will cause the value of the stock to fall. On the other hand, if the stock comes from a company whose profits will rise in lockstep to inflation, the stock itself ought to rise in value in lockstep to inflation, at least approximately. Second, it is true that bonds reflect expectations regarding inflation, but if those expectations change, the values of the bonds one has in one's portfolio will also change. Looie496 (talk) 22:01, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

"If a stock pays a fixed dividend per share, then a rise in inflation will cause the value of the stock to fall." You mean its yield will increase? No, I do not believe that is true. Only happens if interest rates rise. Are you sure you're not mixing them up? 92.29.127.125 (talk) 22:44, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Interest rates always rise when significant inflation sets in -- you're right that I was taking that for granted, but it is practically a law of nature. Who is going to loan money at 5% if the money loses 10% of its value each year? Looie496 (talk) 04:27, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

On the contrary, if a share gives 5% and then inflation rises, then the nominal value of the share will increase, and since the real value of the companies debts will fall, then its dividend should increase above inflation also. So investors will get both a capital gain and an increase in dividend. Investors would be overjoyed to "loan" their money. I think in developed countries, the central bank makes the decision over what the minimum lending rate will be, and if it thinks inflation is too low, then it will not increase interest rates. 92.15.8.176 (talk) 10:18, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

And by the way let me point out that the US Federal Reserve has in fact set its inflation target upward a bit: to 2%. And even this has caused a huge amount of moaning and groaning by the Republicans, the party who primarily represent the wealthy. Looie496 (talk) 00:04, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Inflation in the UK is currently at double the target rate, yet the Bank of England hasn't increased interest rates (they are currently pretty much as low as they can go without being zero). That suggests to me that they do accept that high inflation is a price worth paying at the moment. --Tango (talk) 13:33, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

It would be very much better for business confidence if they made it public, and also if they gave definate dates until which interest rates would stay the same until, instead of leaving people guessing every month. 92.29.127.125 (talk) 19:12, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't see how picking an arbitrary date would be better than making informed decisions based on new financial data each month. --Tango (talk) 20:22, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Try reading the previous paragraph again. 92.29.127.125 (talk) 22:46, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

What was the US inflation target before? Having a target nearer zero might explain why the US recession has been more severe than that in the UK. 92.29.119.112 (talk) 10:02, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Actually, the US Federal Reserve's policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee has never had an explicit inflation target, though it has considered doing so and has recently set "target ranges". However, historically the FOMC avoided even stating a target range under the grounds that secrecy was a key central bank tool for managing interest rates and the money supply. I don't think that the FOMC ever announced a lower "target range" than the current 1.5–2%, so this is not demonstrably a higher target than before. Before, there was no stated target. The FOMC merely decided whether current inflation was too high, tolerable, or (recently for the first time since the 1930s) dangerously low. Marco polo (talk) 16:00, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, I think it has generally been believed that the implicit goal was to have inflation as low as possible while avoiding any serious risk of deflation. The buzz that the explicit policy has generated is an indication that people believe it represents a change of some sort. But I take your general point. Looie496 (talk) 22:06, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Alternative vote encourages lunatic fringe?

In the UK we are having a referendrum to vote on switching to AV instead of the current system, but so far I've seen virtually no discussion of it and its implications in the media. I don't understand the article either.

1) Will AV make it easier for far right parties to gain a toe-hold?

2) Are Australians content with AV, or is there any wish to have something like we currently have in Britain?

3) Would having AV risk getting the kind of political instability seen in Italy?

I predict a low turn-out for the referendrum, as people do not understand it. Thanks 92.15.1.33 (talk) 20:33, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Is this a question, or an attempt to voice your opinion about AV? AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:39, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

They are questions. I think you are well named. I don't hhave an opinion about AV, I'm simply trying to find out its implications apart from just getting a description of the mechanics of voting. 92.15.1.33 (talk) 21:04, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I think these are valid questions. Have you read today's BBC articles, and some of the pages it links: those under the header "related stories" to the right of the main text area, and the links "What is the alternative vote? Q&A: alternative vote referendum, AV poll: Where parties stand" beneath the textbox just underneath? I think you may find these helpful. Regarding 1) and 3), there are definitely many opinions on those subjects on the linked pages, from people who know what they're talking about (well, politicians at least) Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 20:45, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

It appears to be a bit of a coin toss at the moment; the particular issue is this: do the lunatic parties have concentrated support amongst, well, lunatics... are they something that most of us quite like but would never vote for, given 0 exlectability. My gut feeling (as a libertarian supporter but a reulcutant conservative voter) is the latter so I think there is some sense in that viewpoint... on the other hand BNP supporters are honestly no problem (EDL could be but no one can tell what they're for, apart from anti-Islam (a good aim admittedly but so is any anti-religion)) so the main lunacy is greens, who you'll have noticed already have a seat (a good justification for not giving students the vote). Or labour, which is criminally insane lunacy, if it were up to me I would have approximately half the parliamentry labour party put to death (not all of them, I like quite a few: Frank Field, Tony Benn, etc...])

So to er sum up my gibbering... it really is something we need to see what happens. Take a look at politicalbetting - a fantastic site with very clued up people. Egg Centric 21:36, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

For me, the most important deciding factor is which system will best keep the far-right out. I'm not certain which choice will do that. The "yes" campaign to my surprise say that they will; I think I like many other people am getting confused with proportional representation. 92.15.1.33 (talk) 21:31, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

For 1) No! AV is designed to find a winner that is acceptable to the majority of the voters. Chance of the far right winning a seat under AV is less than under FPTP. If you think of the situation where a sizeable minority may rank the far right first and pretty much everybody else ranks them last, then the far right would never win the seat under AV, whereas under FPTP they may just sneak in if the remaining vote is split between enough parties.

For 3) Also no. AV is not proportional representation. The Italy situation mainly arises since their version of PR gives every party with some fraction of the vote a seat, whereas most sane PR systems impose a limit of something like 5% or 7% of the overall vote polled before any seats are assigned. AV is miles from either variant. AV will do little to encourage smaller parties, but will split the seats between the larger parties more fairly. Hence less landslide victories, probably slightly higher chance of coalition governments. (Which, I consider a good thing; in general, not in the current incarnation.) 86.145.164.245 (talk) 21:42, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I think the simple answer is to point at all the countries that have an election system similar to that. Are their economies better or worse on average than Britain's? And as to people being able to understand it, do other countries have big problems with their voting? The experiment has been done a number of times - the scientific method to answer your question says to look at the results of the experiments. Dmcq (talk) 23:53, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Where, if anywhere, can I see this info? Thanks 92.29.119.112 (talk) 10:25, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Some political scientists would say that jurisdictions with instant-runoff voting are less likely to have two-party systems than those with FPTP because of Duverger's law, which says that FPTP systems lead to two dominant parties. Duverger's law seems to apply in the U.S., where voting for a third party (such as the Greens) is often considered counterproductive because it can split the vote on your side of the ideological spectrum and help the candidate of the opposite political orientation win. However, Duverger's law seems to be dead in the UK and Canada, neither of which has a single-party majority government. On the other hand, Australia has IRV and a very stable system in its lower house. There are three parties, but the two conservative parties have worked closely together for decades. So I don't think one can say that IRV would necessarily lead to more political instability. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:26, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Slightly offtopic to the original question, but to the first half of what MWalcoff wrote, there are others who argue that under the current US system, a vote for the Greens, or other minority party, is the opposite of "counterproductive" because if the minority party gets a lot of votes, this will push the dominant Democratic Party and Republican Party toward pandering to that minority party — in this last election, Tea Party candidates did better than expected, and many Republican Party candidates may have veered a little to the right as a result. All that said, I wouldn't dispute that there's also always concern among conservatives that a Tea Partier vote helps the Democrats. Comet Tuttle (talk) 03:01, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

The bit about the "political instability in Italy" needs comment. The postwar Italian political situation was if anything excessively stable until the early nineties. Many so-called "changes in government" would have been called "cabinet reshuffles" in the UK; even those that were not rarely changed the basic makeup of the ruling coalition, though the balance of power within it shifted a bit I suppose. A lot of column inches were generated in newspapers; policy stayed the same, and the two dominant parties, the Christian Democrats and the Socialists, were usually in government, generally with some combination of the Liberals, the Republicans, and the Democratic Socialists — those five made up the so-called Pentapartito, the five-party. (There's a phrase, cambiare di tutto perche' tutto resti com'e`, changing everything so that everything will stay the same.)

The first serious change was likely brought on by the Tangentopoli scandal. The ruling parties, under no real threat of losing office, had become corrupt, and it all came crashing down. The dominant parties shattered and reformed into other coalitions; even the Communists changed their name and moderated their approach. The novel political entities of the Lega Nord, and the various parties headed by Silvio Berlusconi, gained at the expense of the old order.

That event was a genuine change. If that happened all the time, you could say Italy is unstable. But of course it doesn't. Berlusconi has been in power for five years; before that there was a center-left coalition for maybe a couple of years(?), don't remember exactly. Now Berlusconi is likely on his way out. This is normal alternation, something that was sorely missing in the supposedly "unstable" postwar period. --Trovatore (talk) 03:22, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Answering the "are Australians content", speaking as an Aussie, I say yes. You don't often see surprising results due to AV - left wing votes go to the left and get sorted eventually into the leftish major party; right wing votes go to right wing parties and sort down to the major right wing party. But it does mean people are more willing to take a risk on voting on a minor party where they wouldn't dare in first past the post. An example where I think this made a difference is the seat of Melbourne in the 2010 Australian federal election. I believe that in a first past the post system the seat would have gone to Labor. --203.202.43.54 (talk) 07:46, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

If we already have AV for the election of MEPs, does that explain why there are one or two far-right British MEPs (as far as I recall) or is that due to some other reason? Like most people, I'm unaware of what goes on with British MEPs in the European parliament - it never gets reported in the UK as the British parliament does. Thanks 92.29.119.112 (talk) 10:22, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

No, elections of the UK's MEPs is not by AV, but by the D'Hondt method (which is also used, in part, in the elections for the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament). D'Hondt is fully "proportional", AV is just kinda proportional. It's difficult to really predict how real voters will respond to a different voting system, and I don't think one can extrapolate too much from how other countries with the same voting system fare. Compare, for example, the votes in the NW England euro-constituency with those in the Scotland euro constituency. In the 2009 election the BNP got 8% of the vote in NW England and 2.5% in Scotland; UKIP got 16% in NW England and 5% in Scotland. So on the same day, with the same voting system, two adjacent and socio-economically similar constituencies voted in vastly different ways. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 13:34, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

As Finlay says, the election method used for MEP's is very different to AV and it will tend to result in small parties getting a few seats. The other reason the election of MEPs gets a very different result to the election of MPs is the policy areas being vote based on. A lot of people vote based on their opinion of Europe (despite the fact that Westminster will decide whether the UK stays in the EU, not Brussels, so voting for UKIP in European elections is pointless - their main policy is something they can't possibly implement from there). There is a lot of Eurosceptic feeling in the UK, but generally people have higher priorities that they based their UK votes on, but not their European votes. --Tango (talk) 13:49, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I think it's easy to predict how real voters will react. 90% (surely that includes the real ones) will gain their education(?) about it from the tabloid media. They will have no idea how it really works. They will vote in exactly the same way as before. HiLo48 (talk) 19:29, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Australia uses a preferential system (i.e. similar to AV) for the lower house and a proportional representation system for the upper house (each state forming one electorate). The result is that the lower house is usually almost entirely made up of the two major parties (counting the conservative coalition as one party), while the upper house often sees a larger contingent of third (or fourth) party members, even extremist ones on occasion. While this only tangentially answers the original question, I think it illustrates that a preferential system does not tend to elect extremists and still relatively speaking favours the mainstream parties, whereas a proportional representation system is more likely to elect extremists.

On (2), I believe the orthodox and mainstream view in Australia, certainly the impression I got from civics-equivalent class at school, is that FPTP is a crude method that is does not best reflect the preferences of the voters. I have never encountered any instance of anyone arguing that either the preferential or proportional system be abandoned in favour of FPTP. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 07:02, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

What would happen in the following scenario please? Say there were only three candidates: Tory, Labour, Greens or some other small party. Say my first choice under AV is for the Green Party candidate, but my second choice was for Labour. In what circumstances would my first-choice vote for the Green Party be a wasted vote? Is there still any point in tactical voting with AV as there is with FPTP (when you realise your minority-party favourite is never going to get elected, so you vote for your second favourite instead). Thanks 92.15.8.176 (talk) 11:55, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

In your scenario I could see no reason why you'd want to vote other than 1.Green,2.Labour. However there are scenarios where tactical voting under AV is possible: Assume you are a Tory voter and the first preferences are 40% Tory, 30%Lab, 25% LD. Assume that all LD voters have second preference Lab. whereas the second preference of Lab is split 50/50 between LD and Tory. Under AV Lab would win (LD eliminated first, votes transferred to Lab who then win). However *if* 6% of Torys tactically vote LD, then Lab is eliminated first, votes transferred 50/50 to Tory/LD and Tory will win. Counterintuitive and difficult to pull off: if too many Torys switch then LD will win outright. So for all practical purposes tactical voting is so difficult under AV, that one can safely assume it doesn't happen. 81.159.121.108 (talk) 22:13, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

In Australia, parties receive government funding for campaigning, based on primary votes gained at the previous election. That gives a clear reason to put your preferred party first, even if they have no chance of winning. HiLo48 (talk) 22:20, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

When bills are considered together

In Australian parliament when two closely related bills are introduced, members can speak to either bill during the (second reading?) debate. What is this called? 124.149.24.20 (talk) 22:58, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

A cognate debate. Closest we have is Cognate (disambiguation). -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 23:00, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks very much. I knew it started with 'c'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.149.24.20 (talk) 23:34, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I have just removed the "cognate debate"/"bills" entry from Cognate (disambiguation) because it violates WP:DDD. No article links to the redlink cognate debate. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:33, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

March 31

Buddhist immortality

I know the title seems like a contradiction. The focus of Buddhism is the dissolution of the self and impermanence. Well, I am taking a class on Buddhist art and we recently read the Tsukumogami Ki (Record of the Tsukumogami). It mentions an esoteric Buddhist patriarch called Nagabodhi (Jp: Ryuchi Daishi, 龍智大士) taking an elixir of immortality so he could be alive long enough (800 years) to pass his teachings on to two future priests of the Shingon sect. It also mentions a certain Kudonsen (瞿曇仙) who was supposedly an immortal wizard in India. That sounds like a Japanese transliteration to me. I haven't been able to find very much information on both men regarding their life in India and their immortality. Can someone help me find good English material about them, as well as provide examples of other so-called Buddhist immortals? Thanks. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 04:03, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

A brief Chinese Google search suggests that 瞿曇仙 is "Gautama". There seems to be masses of scriptural references, both ancient and more modern texts, mentioning the name. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 04:40, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Likewise a Chinese Google search for 龍智大士 turns up a lot of material. "大士" is an honorific. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 04:42, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

As for 龍智, do these help? [7], [8], and [9]. Oda Mari (talk) 06:25, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I have previously read the majority of what has been presented. Most of the material just says Nagabodhi was the student of so and so and passed on a particular form of esoteric Buddhism. I have found one book that mentions him receiving a siddhi for extending his life, but there has to be more on the subject. I guess the Japanese version of the original Indian tale was colored with Taoism since the "siddhi" became an "elixir." I would like to at least date when he supposedly flourished (that is if he was historical). I read about the Gautama connection to Kudonsen after my original post. It has to be referring to someone else besides Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha. I know it is a common given name. Thanks to all of those who have responded so far. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 12:05, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Our article on Nagabodhi's master Nagarjuna states he lived during the 3rd century CE, so I guess that is a start to dating the historical Nagabodhi. This is the book I was referring to which talks about him receiving the siddhi for immortality. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 13:42, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

A now-living example of a Buddhist immortal is Tenzin Gyatso born Lhamo Dondrup who is believed by Tibetan buddhists to be the latest reincarnation of a series of spiritual leaders titled Dalai Lama who have chosen to be reborn in order to enlighten others. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 07:12, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand the concepts of immortality and reincarnation Cuddlyable3. According to Buddhist beliefs, all living things re-incarnate until they achieve enlightenment. The Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lama, everyone else in China, all the animals in the world - all reincarnate, according to Buddhism. It just so happens that, because the chief Lamas are regarded as important spiritual beings, their reincarnates are actively sought out and venerated. Immortals do not reincarnate. They, by definition, do not die. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:12, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Are cellphones pulling Africans out of poverty? By how much?

I could find the cheapest prepaid phones for $15 in the US nowadays. I wonder how cheap they'd be in Africa. In any case, how fast are user numbers growing, and how are they using these phones to pull out of poverty? How fast is their economies growing thanks to these phones? --70.179.169.115 (talk) 11:46, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

One of the ways that cell phones help poorer countries is that governments do not have to invest as much in infrastructure to provide connectivity. A cell phone tower provides connectivity to many thousands of people at a fraction of the capital cost that laying wire lines would, and (for example) can provide that connectivity to people living in remote areas where getting a land line in would be rediculously hard. For the consumer, the costs may be identical between a landline phone and a cell phone; but if there is no land line to plug your phone into, it is useless. Its one of the reasons why cell phone usage rates are actually higher in the developing world than in the developed world; in many of those places land lines were never laid or were of substandard quality; those countries can literally skip that technology. In the developed world the existing landlines means that people are not forced to change to cell phones if they do not want to... --Jayron32 12:56, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Microfinance institutitions like the Grameen Bank often fund people in developing countries like India and the Philippines to buy a cellular phone. Sometimes the phones people buy are reconditioned phones bought second-hand from people in the developed world (in the UK companies like Mizuma Mobile do that). Relative to people's income the phones are very expensive, but they buy them not for their personal use but as a business venture. A while ago I heard a BBC World Service documentary about microfinance for mobiles in the developing world. One phone was bought by a collective of small farmers in a village in Africa. They sold their product (I forget what - let's say goats) in town (two days walk away). Sometimes there was a shortage of goats in the town, and they'd get a good price, and sometimes a surplus, and they'd get a bad price. If they drove their goats into town and the price was bad, it wasn't economic for them to drive them home, or to sit around until the price improved. Sometimes they sold to a middleman, but he took a bunch of the profit. With the mobile they could phone into town and check the market, and they'd only drive goats into town if it looked like the prices were okay. For them that made for big improvements to their income, and paid for the phone (and was, more macroeconomically, beneficial for the country, as it made the goat-supply-chain more efficient). Similarly the programme talked about "mobile phone ladies" in the Philippines. One lady walked between several villages over the course of a week. If a villager wanted to talk to a relative in the city or overseas, they could rent the phone from her for a few minutes. I think she also took incoming messages (for which she'd also charge a fee). -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 12:58, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Some articles here[10], [11], [12], [13], [14]. Alansplodge (talk) 14:26, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

If you’re homeless, but just learned the finer intricacies of entrepreneurship, how would you invest this money to get a self-sufficient life again?

It takes money to make money, but both big or small investments could land you in a far better, self-sufficient situation in life than you’re in now if you’re homeless. Therefore, how should one invest 1¢, 5¢, 10¢, 25¢, 50¢, $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, $100, $200, $500, $1000 to get back on their feet? What could it buy and how could that purchase lead you to regained self-sufficiency?

(Please answer what you can for each point. Thanks.) --70.179.169.115 (talk) 13:07, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I have edited your question to take up less space. A person can comment on each denomination without putting it under 15 different sub-headings. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 13:28, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

(ec) I do not think each and every one of these points will engender enough separate discussion to warrant 14 separate sections. The reason for this — and the same reason that the number of categories to consider is fallacious — is because the marginal utility of most of these categories is the same, therefore most are redundant. From a practical standpoint, I would collapse all values from $.01 to $10 into one category. This also has practical benefit — it's relatively easy to beg or borrow up to that amount in one afternoon, so considering a "less than $10" category makes more sense than trying to consider the difference between $.10 and $.25 (because the answer in both cases is likely to be the same — go out on the street and beg for quarters). I don't have data, but my gut feeling is that the difference between $10 and $20 is a bit steeper — obviously you could do the same thing two days in a row, but you're going to incur, say, food costs in between then, making it not quite linear. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:30, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Didn't we just answer the same question a few days ago? In any case... for amounts over $200, I would suggest "investing" in some new clothing... to wear at job interviews. Blueboar (talk) 14:01, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

The answer is defintely get yourself cleaned up with the money and go to interviews to get a job. If you can't even get a job for yourself, and therefore remain homeless, I won't want to do any business with you. So having understood the "finer intricacies" is not helping you if you smell, because to do any business, you need to meet people, so you can't be smelly and expect success at those meetings. --Lgriot (talk) 14:46, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Please don't generalize... Not all homeless people smell (in fact, not smelling is very important to most homeless people). The point being made is that when you apply for a job, you want to present a neat and tidy appearance... you want to look professional (which will be different depending on the job you are seeking). Homeless people may not have been able to afford to keep up their wardrobe (their meager resources going to more important things like food). Their clothing may have become frayed, faded, ripped etc., and frayed/faded/ripped clothing will not impress a potential employer. Blueboar (talk) 15:40, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree that, if you are not presentable already, making yourself presentable would be the first priority for investment, and that would probably take at least $50 for a trip to a thrift store for used clothes, a drug store for toothpaste, toothbrush, and soap, and perhaps a fee for the YMCA to use their shower. The next step would be to get a job, probably doing day labor, that would generate enough income for you to establish an address (preferably by renting a room, but at least to rent a mailbox if you are going to stay for now at a homeless shelter) and to set up a cheap cell phone account. The reason is that most jobs other than day labor require an address and a phone number. Your next step would be to get a job that pays better than day labor, preferably a job that pays enough for you to rent a room where you can get your life together. Your next step would be to get a job that teaches you about the business in which you want to exercise your entrepreneurial skills. The reason for this is that it is not enough to have entrepreneurial skills. You also need to know something about the specific business in which you want to exercise those skills. No matter how excellent your entrepreneurial skills are, they won't allow you to compete if you don't know the details of the business, unless you can hire someone who does know those details. It would be easier to learn the details of a business on the job than to amass the $200,000 or more that you would need to invest if you want to have any chance of success starting a new business that you know nothing about. Much of that money would be needed to guarantee a year's salary to someone who knows the details of the business. Since you are starting with nothing, it would be easier for you to work in the business in which you want to be an entrepreneur until you 1) know enough to run the business yourself, and 2) have saved up a somewhat smaller sum (at least maybe $30,000 depending on the business) to start the business with yourself as the only employee, with the expectation that you will live on very little income until you build up the business. Marco polo (talk) 15:43, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Get a job, eg gardening (which you could obtain by having some flyers printed), then after doing it for a while to get experience, employ other people to do the work. 92.29.127.125 (talk) 19:37, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

If I hadnt been too lazy to bother, what I meant to write was: Get a job eg gardening, then after doing it for a while to get experience, either continue on your own self-employed or if you want to avoid the physical labour employ other people to do the work. Obtain work by having some flyers printed which you put in peoples letterboxes/mailboxes. 92.15.8.176 (talk) 13:14, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Better to start off working under someone else. Starting a new business legitimately takes additional funds, and doing it incorrectly (esp. for something like gardening) can expose you to legal liabilities (e.g. you are edging someone's property and you accidentally sever their sprinkler system or scratch their car — and they sue you for the repairs). For 14 year old who mow their neighbor's lawn, this is not something that is worried about, but if you are a grown adult and trying to do real business, you have to worry about things like this. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:23, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Are they stumbling around drunk? 92.15.8.176 (talk) 12:48, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

If they've got no money, there is no point suing them. 92.29.127.125 (talk) 22:38, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Alas if that were true. But you can sue people without money, and get court orders which garnish their future wages. In any case, part of what I was trying to point out is that the "just start a new business, what could go wrong?" approach is not very sensible. It's extremely hard to start a new business or to be self-employed. If you are in a really quite marginal situation, you are better off trying to find something under someone else to begin with, and only branch out into self-employment when you have some fallback. This is something you see firsthand if you have friends (as I do) who have failed businesses. (The suggestion of self-gardening is especially impractical unless you are suggesting that they magically already have all of the tools.) --Mr.98 (talk) 01:20, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

You're suggesting that nobody bothers to get out of bed in the morning, as they could be sued. Its unlikely that anyone is going to take a down and out to court for the things you have described. When the business is more established they can get business insurance. Its easy to start a new small business in the US or the UK, the difficult thing is making enough money to keep it going. If you cannot find a job, then taking the initiative and becoming self-employed may be your only option. I suggested gardening because in my experience people charge high rates per hour for what is a low-skill job with no qualifications required. The potential gardener may have a garden already and hence have the tools and some of the skills already. If not then home gardening tools can be bought cheaply, and there are many popular books to read about gardening. What your friends may have done is to invest/borrow a lot of money in their business, which they lost when the business folded, but this does not apply much to a self-employed gardener. 92.15.8.176 (talk) 12:42, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Where is heaven?

Where is heaven physically located, according to Christianity? Where is hell? 92.29.127.125 (talk) 19:35, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Different denominations of Christianity have different beliefs on the subject. See Heaven (Christianity) for details. Similarly, see Hell in Christian beliefs for details of the different versions of hell in different denominations. --Tango (talk) 19:44, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The Bible describes Heaven as being physically located just above the Firmament, the covering over the earth, on which the stars are attached. However, most modern Christians do not hold this belief, since it is not consistent with our best understanding of the structure of the world. Some modern Christians believe that Heaven is a purely spiritual place, with no physical location. Others believe in Heaven as a real, physical place, but not one that is reachable by any physical means- although they don't phrase it this way, they seem to think of it as a kind of parallel universe. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 19:47, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

It is not at all clear that the Bible describes that. The Bible (unless you are Ethiopian or Eritrean Orthodox, who have the Book of Enoch -- which does have cosmological descriptions -- in their canon of Scripture) has no clear cosmology -- the passages in Genesis, Psalms, and Job that hint at cosmological matters are all highly poetic and possibly contradictory if taken literally (in Genesis 1 the earth appears to float upon waters, in Job 26 it is hung "upon nothing", for example; the first may mean "earth" as in "lands" and the second "the world", but they may be poetic with no clear cosmological vision). God is in some sense 'above', but again all this is highly poetic -- there is little clear reason to take these passages literally. In any case, the idea of Heaven as a location for human souls in the present age is New Testament -- the OT visions of punishment and reward focus on the Judgment Day, and have little interest in the intervening state of the dead (though there are hints in the Deuterocanon, eg Wisdom of Solomon 3) -- and the New Testament has even less cosmology. Christ ascended in a resurrected body, so some sort of bodily existence is at least possible there, but it seems not to be physical quite in the sense we know -- "a spiritual body" from 1 Corinthians, etc. Vultur (talk) 08:28, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

It should be noted that a lack of understanding as to the actual physical location and properties of heaven and hell doesn't actually mean they don't exist, from a religious point of view. One can accept both that they exist and that one does not have enough information about them to know their nature. --Jayron32 20:09, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I think heaven and hell are best described as states of existence of the soul, rather than physical locations. EamonnPKeane (talk) 20:30, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

The question isn't about what you think, though. Personal beliefs aren't relevant on a reference desk. --Tango (talk) 20:36, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Keane's description is one I've heard a number of Christians use, so it's not just his personal idea. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:55, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Tango I think not. But that's a fault of mine to work on. A personal belief that has gained significant and enduring notice by the world at large, see WP:N, is appropriate to record in Wikipedia and therefore is also mentionable on a reference desk. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 07:21, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

The two citations that Tango posted originally here contain lots of information on various theories/beliefs as to the nature of heaven and hell. There is a lot of variation, and some of these theories are like what Keane said. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:38, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

"... most modern Christians do not hold this belief, since it is not consistent with our best understanding of the structure of the world." By that logic, most Christians wouldn't believe in God or Heaven at all. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:50, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

The OP should also bear in mind that "heaven" and "hell" are ill-defined terms. Each means some subset of:

• where God is
• where God and some angels are
• where God is not
• where all dead people go
• where some dead people go
• where some dead people go before the final judgment
• where some dead people go after the final judgment

The concepts developed gradually over the time the Bible was being written, so if what you mean when you ask about details of either one according to Christianity is "according to the Bible", you may get different answers depending where you slice it. Marnanel (talk) 20:49, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

According to this article, Heaven is in London, England. Blueboar (talk) 21:39, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

According to this article, it's somewhere on earth. Marnanel (talk) 22:19, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Hell is in California. Albacore (talk) 22:55, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Funny, I always thought it was in Michigan. Nyttend (talk) 00:42, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

"Do I know where hell is? Hell is in 'Hello'. Heaven is 'Goodbye forever, it's time for me to go'..." from the song "Wand'rin' Star", from Paint Your Wagon. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:57, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

"Is this heaven?" "It's Iowa." "I could have sworn it was heaven." "Is there a heaven?" "Oh, yeh. It's the place where dreams come true." "Maybe you're right. Maybe this is heaven." -- Dialogue from Field of Dreams. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:59, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

The explorer-researcher L. Ron Hubbard reported[15] "I have been to Heaven.", apparently a high place in the mountains of an unnamed planet. Two experts that disagree about the entranceway to heaven are Eddie Cochran "there are 3 steps to heaven" and Celine Dion "four steps away"[16]. Wheelchair users who strenuously overcome these hindrances croak on arrival "I'm in heaven, And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak"[17]. After recovery, the newcomers according to an interviewed imam find themselves in comfortable homes, reclining on silk couches....given the delights of sex, the delights of wine, the delights of food. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 11:27, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Heaven Is in the Back Seat of My Cadillac. Although it might be in the front seat. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:44, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

What do people who believe the Bible to be literally true make of space rockets etc? 92.29.127.125 (talk) 22:36, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Umm, we believe that they exist, fly around, etc. What's the confusion? Nyttend (talk) 00:42, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

"Fiery chariots". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:54, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I have never met a person who really "believed the Bible" so maybe they persons, not bibles don't exist. However if they do, they will be conceptually challenged by the "etc" that the 92.29.127.125 wrote. A person who believes stories about a talking snake, a talking ass and a man using a whale as a submarine would on seeing a space rocket sing Psalm 68:33 "To him that rideth upon the heavens, which were of old; lo, he doth send out his voice, and that a mighty voice." Cuddlyable3 (talk) 21:24, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

"I have never met" does not mean "does not exist". See Biblical inerrancy. Corvus cornix_talk 22:20, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

To go back to the original OP question. Most Main-line Christian Churches accept that Heaven is not located in the physical but as a state, in the Spiritual realm. In the atricle page Saint Dismas, Saint Thomas Aquinas, (sorry wrong person, put here), refers to Saint Dismas in Heaven even though he was more physically in hades / sheol. So, too, we accept the same of Hell, that it is not a "physical" place but a state. The Gospel references are quite clear, and many. MacOfJesus (talk) 19:31, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

According to the Satanic Bible hell is here on earth; as for heaven, it's not a place Satanists would wish to spend eternity.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 15:25, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Question on location of place in Colorado (Census maps needed)

I'm trying to figure out where 1829 Denver West Drive, Bldg. 27 Golden, CO 80401 is located? Is it in a municipality? Or a CDP? Where can I find very detailed census maps that can help me find this? WhisperToMe (talk) 23:34, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

It's either in Lakewood or West Pleasant View. The 2000 census didn't really produce such detailed maps for many communities, and factfinder2.census.gov (the main webpage for the 2010 census) doesn't have maps available yet, as far as I can tell. However, I can give you another type of source: the Jefferson County website has a detailed GIS that you can use. Go to it, accept their terms, and navigate to the area that you want. You'll see that there's a blob of Lakewood that literally has Denver West Drive as its eastern boundary; when I put the address into Google Maps, it shows me a spot almost exactly on the southern boundary of the blob. The GIS window says that it has an option of using aerial view, but I've not found it yet. Finally — according to a 2000 Census Bureau map, the circle within that blob is included within West Pleasant View. Although I can't find a 2010 map, I know that West Pleasant View is still in existence, so it probably includes that area. Nyttend (talk) 02:10, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Better answer — it's definitely unincorporated, so unless the boundaries have changed for 2010, it's in West Pleasant View. If you look at the page I linked as "go to it", you'll see a link entitled "Address Wizard". Go to it, enter the house number (just "1829", not "1829 Denver West Drive", or it will complain that "D" and "e" and "n" and all the other characters aren't integers :-), click Submit, click 1829 DENVER WEST DR, click Submit, and it will give you a report on the property with tons of information ranging from its municipal status (unincorporated) to such well-known information as the names of the U.S. Senators for the area. Nyttend (talk) 02:16, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Google Maps takes you to the Jefferson County Board of Education Building, so if all else fails, call them and ask. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:21, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Except that people often have no idea whether they're within municipal limits at the precise moment (unless they're at their house, because they should know whether they pay municipal taxes), especially when they're so close to the border, so I'm sure that the county's GIS should be trusted here. Nyttend (talk) 11:57, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much, Nyttend :) WhisperToMe (talk) 19:34, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

April 1

Famous "pointing at celebrity" photo?

There's a famous photo that has someone standing next to a celebrity, pointing at them and grinning. I've seen references to this photo a million times, but I don't know what the original is! Here are two such references: 1 2 All my friends think I'm crazy and that there is no original photo with this pose. I think there must be. Help me out? --✶♏✶ 00:44, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

The first picture I thought of after looking at your links was Lynndie England. There's also Elvis & Nixon; it looks like the King is pointing, but it's just his belt buckle. --some jerk on the Internet (talk) 04:10, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

This has to be an old gesture. I recall this is something that Regis Philbin used to do with guests on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, although a bit more gently than in these pics. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:52, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I would say that it would have to be a pretty old and iconic (and family-friendly) to be paid homage in a Disney movie... 99.245.16.5 (talk) 07:38, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes. It might be ancient. Think of old-style advertising where someone is wearing a big grin and pointing to something that they want you to pay attention to. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:40, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

There is a very iconic feel to the pose. It seems like one would say "this guy here, this is the guy" while making it, and as a matter of fact, a GIS for that very phrase yields these charming lads. Doesn't get us closer to an original, though. I also tried splitting the phrases in the image search. No better luck there. Nor did "I'm with this guy" or "I'm with him/her" paired with smile, grin, point. So at least I know a few blind alleys now. --some jerk on the Internet (talk) 12:59, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Do you think this is an arguable thesis? (The Sun Also Rises)

So I'm writing a major paper for my junior Am. Lit class and just found out I have to do a last-minute thesis switch for my paper on The Sun Also Rises because someone else is doing the same topic that I chose to write about. I like the idea of arguing that Brett is the only thing preventing Jake from becoming a code hero. Don't worry, I'm not asking you to write my essay for me! I'm just wondering if you think that (a) it's true, and (b) I would be able to argue this for 4 or so pages. In particular, I'm thinking about Jake's reckless behaviour around Brett (especially betraying his aficion), and his rational behaviour dealing with everything else (e.g., when Cohn wants to run off to S. America, he is being a typical Hemingway hero, while Jake's advice is that of a code hero). What do you think? I'm kind of panicking right about now, and so I'm not sure if I'm thinking clearly or not. Who knows? I could be completely wrong...

Oh, I should clarify: Most people use "Hemingway hero" and "code hero" interchangeably; however, my teacher defines a code hero as one who "backs his play then makes it" and a Hemingway hero as one who "makes his play then backs it" (like Cohn wanting to go to S. America but not considering the consequences or Jake introducing Brett to Romero without considering the consequences). — Preceding signed comment added by Cymru.lass (talk • contribs) 02:05, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Jews or... Proto-Jews?

Is it correct to refer to Hebrews who lived before the Assyrian exile as Jews (as is done here, for example)? The word "Jew" is derived from the tribe and/or kingdom of Judah, so to me it seems anachronistic to apply it to the pre-exile Hebrews as a whole. On the one hand, we have precedent for giving people names that they didn't use themselves (e.g. the Byzantine Empire); there was, for the surviving tribes, no fundamental religious or ethnic cleaveage as a result of the exile; and antisemites would surely try to exploit the semantic notion that Abraham and Moses weren't Jews; but nonetheless, there is the fact that they wouldn't have self-identified as Yehudim. Has there been any discussion of this question anywhere? --140.232.183.234 (talk) 04:36, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Just a comment on the term "pre-Jew". That could mean "whoever came before Jews", including people of completely different religions and ethnicities. Perhaps "proto-Jew" would be more in line with your intention. StuRat (talk) 04:53, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

(Note that the title has now been changed). StuRat (talk) 04:59, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

140.232.183.234 -- All the ancient languages had only one word (Hebrew יהודי, Greek Ιουδαιος, Latin Judaeus etc.) to express three separate meanings: 1] A "Judahite" or member of the tribe of Judah by genealogical descent. 2] A "Judean" or inhabitant of the region of Judea (or before 586 BC, an inhabitant of the southern kingdom of Judah). 3] A "Jew", or member of the distinctive monotheistic religion which was associated with Judeans. Note that the kingdom of Judah included Benjaminites, Levites, presumably the remnants of Simeonites, and scattered members of other tribes (not only Judahites). After the reforms of Hezekiah or Josiah (and the fall of the northern kingdom), anyone who accepted the leadership of the Jerusalem authorities was effectively a "Jew", regardless of tribal affiliation. By the time of the Book of Esther, there's even a Hebrew derived verb participle mityahed "becoming Jewish". If you consider the term "Jew" to be anachronistic for the pre-7th-century-BC period, then the accepted alternative term is "Israelite"... AnonMoos (talk) 06:53, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

An interesting comparison to the Jews and Judaism is the Samaritans; after Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Post-exile, the two groups formed distinct ethnic and religious groups; though both descend directly from the pre-exile Israelite people. The Samaritans are basically the descendants of the people of the Northern Kingdom in the same way that the Jews are the descendants of the people of the Southern Kingdom. For various reasons, the Samaritan people are a much diminished group and have not been as historically recognized as the Jews, in Roman Empire times their population rivaled that of the Jews; today there are less than 1000 still extant. --Jayron32 14:23, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

In the Persian and Hellenistic periods (before the militantly anti-Samaritan Maccabees conquered the north) the numbers of Samaritans and Jews in the southern Levant may have been roughly comparable, but I don't think that the total numbers of Samaritans rivaled the total numbers of Jews (i.e. both in Judea and elsewhere). AnonMoos (talk) 16:03, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree with AnonMoos that the correct word for the ancestors of the Jews is Israelites. Marco polo (talk) 17:28, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Abraham is usually considered "the first Jew," meaning the first person to practice the religion that would come to be known as Judaism. It is true that the word "Y'hudi" did not become prominent, as far as we know, until the Persian period. However, that does not mean that the Israelites of the pre-exilic period were not "Jews." Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman probably didn't refer to themselves as "African-Americans," but that doesn't mean they weren't. That said, it might be more appropriate to call the Jews of the pre-exilic period "Israelites" or "Hebrews," especially if referring to the period of the divided monarchy. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:19, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Song without a chorus

Is there a term for a song that doesn't have a chorus? I'm thinking of rock or pop music in particular. Comet Tuttle (talk) 06:11, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

The structure is often called the AAA-form or AAA-song-form. (As opposed to AABA etc). ---Sluzzelin talk 06:44, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

And see strophic form. ---Sluzzelin talk 06:47, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:31, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Which parts/cities of China or Taiwan will have the lowest cost of living?

I was told that the SSI payment of $674/month is the salary of a middle school teacher in China. However, apartment prices may vary wildly between Beijing and Wuxi. Which cities in China or Taiwan will have at least 50,000 people, but the lowest costs of living in the nation? As I'm taking Chinese language classes now, I hope to escape to China to run away from the inevitable student loan payments and invest in any kind of online business that'll give enough of a ROI to finally enable me to pay off all debts, domestic and international. Thank you kindly. --70.179.169.115 (talk) 09:58, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Nice, run off and leave the taxpayers with the bill. I will not be party to conspiracy to commit fraud. Googlemeister (talk) 13:14, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Ditto --Reference Desker (talk) 14:26, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

It's generally a good idea to avoid tipping people off when you're planning a scheme like this. Qrsdogg (talk) 15:31, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the refdesk strongly disapproves of people who want to pay off all their debts! Had you said you did not intend to pay off your debts, then Googlemeister, Reference Desker and Qrsdogg would have helped you. DuncanHill (talk) 16:08, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Duncan, in both cases he/she is defaulting on loan payments. Making up for it later, while it might be better then never paying it back, would still be tantamount to robbing a bank, investing the $$$, and then giving the bank it's money back a couple years later so you can keep the gains. I think the FBI would not be a fan even though you gave the $ back later. Googlemeister (talk) 16:18, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

All I'm saying is, think about what the consequences would be if the Cyber Police backtrace you... Qrsdogg (talk) 18:05, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

You're right, banks don't usually take out loans they likely can't repay with the intent of defaulting on them. That's because they can count on the taxpayers to bail them out as soon as they threaten to default. Since that is moral, how can this scheme be immoral? Wnt (talk) 12:26, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Folks, I was once in the situation of being unable to make student loan payments because my income was insufficient to cover my subsistence needs plus the loan payments. I went into temporary default until I could raise my income enough to pay off the debt, which I did. So I will spare the questioner from moralistic and judgmental remarks and point out that the cost of living is generally lower in mainland China than anywhere in Taiwan. Furthermore, in general, the cost of living is lower the further you move from the coast of China and the further you are from a large city. China has thousands of cities of over 50,000 people, so it would be unwieldy to provide a list here. In fact, Chinese cities with populations under 100,000 tend not to even have articles on Wikipedia. This site compares consumption expenditures (a proxy for cost of living) in China's provinces. As you can see, the provinces with the lowest costs are Heilongjiang, Guizhou, and Gansu. You might consider a smaller city such as Liupanshui or Tieli, for example, but with research, you could identify dozens of locations in these provinces alone. Marco polo (talk) 16:38, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Thinking about your issue some more, however, I have the following observation: Is China really the best location for an online business? The Great Firewall of China could impede internet communication between China and the rest of the world, particularly during times of political tension or crisis. Unless your goal is to try to tap the Chinese market, maybe you'd want to consider another low-cost venue with greater freedom of expression, such as India (where English is widely understood). Marco polo (talk) 17:23, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

On the ethical question, this person wants to put himself or herself into a position where he or she can pay back a debt. What is unethical about that? It is not like stealing a bank. The Federal government will continue to charge interest on the unpaid loan, as well as nonpayment penalties, all of which this person presumably intends to pay, so the government continues to get its return. Marco polo (talk) 20:41, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Hmm I don't know, how about willfully not abiding with the terms of the loan they signed? I mean it is one thing if they actually try to pay back their loan as they go and fail, but to skip town and say, "I will pay on my own terms, not those that I agreed to" is not ethical and helps to raise interest rates for everyone else. Googlemeister (talk) 21:00, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

A loan is a private contract between two legal or natural persons right? I don't know anything about how the student loan scheme operates in the US (I presume we are talking about the US), but if the terms of the loan are such that they create a loophole whereby the OP, by living overseas, can delay repayment, then that is part of the rights created by the contract, and if the lender does not like it, then they should have retained better lawyers to do their drafting! It definitely is not fraud to take advantage of your legal rights under a contract even to the disadvantage of the other party, unless you had forced the advantageous term upon the other party by unfair means. When it's a borrower against an institutional lender, I can hardly imagine how this can be the case.

As to the ethics of it, a student loan that demands repayment regardless of the person's earnings seems, to me, to be unethical. (I come from a country where student loans are provided by the government, and do not need to be repaid until and unless your income within said country exceed a reasonable threshold.) Some might even say that an education system that makes you take on debt in order to afford it is also unethical. I don't think it's nearly so clear cut whether delaying (or even avoiding) your student loan obligations are unethical if the education thus paid for has not allowed you to generate the income necessary to repay the loan.

For the OP's question - definitely somewhere inland, away from the major cities. Of course you have to consider whether you have the ability to survive there, and whether the added risk of, say, being arbitrarily arrested, outweighs the benefits of a lower cost of living. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:06, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

kevin book at clear view energy

is there a bio?

just saw him speak, but web page is just a blank logo.

is this how i request that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.10.145.66 (talk) 14:41, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I have no idea what you are asking. And the fact that this question has been up for ten hours and nobody has tried to answer it suggests that other people are also unclear what you are asking. Can you be more specific? What web page are you talking about? --ColinFine (talk) 23:19, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I still get cross at Wikipedia's policy of not capitalising words after the first in Section headings, but the total absence of capitals in this heading renders it meaningless. HiLo48 (talk) 00:13, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

I will guess that the OP wants to know if there is a bio of Mr. Kevin Book, the managing director of a company called ClearView Energy Partners LLC. (he has been interviewed on the business news shows such as bloomberg.com). I do not know of one. Blueboar (talk) 01:01, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Ah, so US-centric as well, with no thought from the OP that this is a global encyclopaedia and, when the country in't identified, some of us don't automatically think of the USA. HiLo48 (talk) 00:42, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

If you google [kevin book], there is a very short list of references to the guy. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:04, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I didn't know it was a guy. I thought he was a book. HiLo48 (talk) 08:08, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

That would have been a reasonable assumption. I'm still not totally sure, but one of the google items had something about energy as a subject, which fits Blueboar's comment. Google is not necessarily a good indicator of notability, but it's a fair indicator of lack of notability, as the number of references seems pretty short. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:18, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Guanfu

When in the Qing Dynasty was the Guanfu salt-making site abolished? My book says Guide was abolished in 1756 and Dongguan in 1789, but said nothing about Guanfu (or Huangtian for that matter). Thanks Kayau Voting IS evil 16:01, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Not really an answer. but some information here "Before the Dark Age, Jiangxi people relied on Guangdong salt. Because of the Great Evacuation (1661-69), they used salt from the Huai River instead. Moreover, few salt-making people returned to Hong Kong. The government's efforts to revive the industry failed. Nowadays, there are still salt-making sites in Tuen Mun and Tai O, but the quality of the salt is inferior to that of the previous dynasties". Alansplodge (talk) 12:07, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

That's exactly the page for which I'm trying to find the info. Look at the page history. :P Kayau Voting IS evil 12:33, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I hate it when that happens! Alansplodge (talk) 15:03, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

finance question

What is the best way to hide $ from the US government? I want to cheat on my taxes but I will pay them back in 10 years if I am still solvent.

Googlemeister (talk) 16:43, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Marry one of the Windsors. Try Princess Anne. I bet she's desperate.92.15.8.176 (talk) 17:00, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

You'd have to persuade her to divorce Captain Tim Laurence first though. --TammyMoet (talk) 17:27, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Or you could try nicely asking the IRS if they'll treat you like Chris Dodd and Barney Frank. Simply make a request to pay your taxes back as you please, without imposing any sort of financial penalties whatsoever, and justify it by stating you simply couldn't find a convenient time to file your 1040. It worked for Dodd and Frank; hell, they are/were the chairs of the Finance Committee in the Senate and House respectively, so why shouldn't it work for you? If they can't get their shit together for their taxes, how could they possibly expect you to? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:48, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Or just throw TurboTax under the bus like Tim Geithner did. Qrsdogg (talk) 18:02, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

That depends on how much money, and how it is earned. Income earned the "normal" way: as a salaried or wage earning worker at a reputable place of business, is much harder to hide than money earned by the self employed. If you make money selling produce at farmer's markets, most of your transactions are in cash, and you just report (and pay taxes on) a lower income than you really earn. The government could check on it (check how much money you're spending or saving, compare your income to others in similar positions, etc.), but it's more work. If you work as a clerk at Walmart (or whatever), your employer gives you a W-2, which the government can track down pretty easily.

If your super rich (either legitimately, or as a member of organized crime), you hire a lawyer who knows a lot more about U.S. tax codes than we do at this reference desk. They can take advantage of legal means of sheltering income ("tax loopholes"), as well as illegal means. The "traditional" illegal way to shelter large amounts of money is to hide it in an offshore account. Switzerland used to be a common place for this (see Banking in Switzerland), but my understanding is that the Swiss aren't nearly as friendly to this activity as they used to be, and now the Caribbean nations and such are more popular. In any case, there are lots of scams out there about offshore banking [18]. If you do plan on sheltering large amounts of money offshore, within the law or not, get a competent lawyer. Buddy431 (talk) 17:53, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Googlemeister, you're on record as saying, very recently: "I will not be party to conspiracy to commit fraud". Now, two threads later, you want to "cheat on your taxes", and you're seeking the advice of others, i.e. asking them to conspire with you to commit fraud. Do you seriously expect us to do that which your morals prevent you from doing? Wait, what morals ... ? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:16, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I think it was an experiment. See talk page. ---Sluzzelin talkñ

Yes, I see that now. This is not what the ref desks are for. Besides, I've had my fill of falling for April Fools Day jokes. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:41, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Tax avoidance is smart business... Tax evasion is a crime. We can give you lots of advice (not necessarily good advice, but lots of it) in regards to the former... we will not advise you as to the latter. Blueboar (talk) 01:13, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

That raises the issue of whether we should be giving "advice" at all, about any subject. You wouldn't go to a reference desk at a library and expect to be given advice about how to avoid tax, about how to approach that cute girl in school, about how to lose weight, about how to dress for an interview, about how to fix your car, TV or computer, or just about anything else. You might be given the names of reference material or organisations that could help you. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 01:28, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

The top of the ref desk page says: The reference desk will not answer ... questions that ... seek guidance on legal matters. It seems pretty clear to me that the OP's question is out of scope of the ref desk. Mitch Ames (talk) 04:11, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

HG Wells quote

The quote "civilization is a race between education and catastrophe" is attributed to HG Wells. But I cannot find where the quote comes from. Help? Kingturtle = (talk) 19:58, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

More accurately, "Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe". It's from chapter 41 of his The Outline of History. Full context here. --Antiquary (talk) 20:28, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

April 2

Evil or uniformed?

First Im sorry for bad english, Im Serbian.

I have this question that I've been thinking lately, especially in the past few months. When I was a child and America bombed my country, everyone here used to say "Average Americans are not evil, they dont know about war crimes Clinton is commiting". Then when they invaded Afganistan and Iraq our politicians still said "Its Bush, average Americans dont know about real reasons and they are uninformed". Now that they attacked Libya, even respected American intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore condemned it,so obviusly an average American can know the truth if he wants to learn it, but still I dont see any massive American protests against the new war.

This got me reading about past American policy and I red a speech made by Che Guevarra made 50 years ago in which he explains basicly that just because Kennedy is invading Cuba it doesnt mean all Americans are evil, they are just not informed.

And these days every single political party in my county condemned bombings of civilians in Libya, but still no party condemned the whole American people.

So for years its always an excuse: "Its not all Americans(or British or French in the last few decades) that support war crimes, its their governments". But it is not logical that for that many years one nations governments commit these atrocities all the time, but that people dont know whats happening.

So my question is: is it possible that Americans are really that ill-informed ("stupid Americans", as Russians say), or is it simply that they are aware of everything that is happening, but they simplz dont care. I mean, every country had SOME bad governments, by country included, but if one nation keep electing one evil president after another, then there must be something wrong with that nation?

Is there a book or a web site that I can learn more about this, cause unlike most people Im not anti-American and there must surely be an explanation for this other then "they are an evil nation"?

Thanks and once again sorry for grammar mistakes --77.243.20.194 (talk) 01:52, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

I think you'll find that there are too many answers to list. Just using my siblings as an example, the knowledge of the events in Libya would go from complete ignorance from my youngest sister (in her 40s) and a well read opinion from my brother (in his 50s). Dismas|^(talk) 02:10, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

You don't seem to question your own assumptions that all of those military actions are unjustified. Some are definitely justified by UN resolutions/international support as well as a causus belli:

1) The war crimes (massacre of civilians) by Serbia justified the attacks on them.

2) The 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center definitely justified an attack on Afghanistan to get at al-Queada and their Taliban supporters.

3) The Arab League voted for air strikes against Libya after Gaddafi threatened to massacre civilians.

Now, the invasion of Iraq and the Bay of Pigs in Cuba were less justified, but your assumption that everything the US does is evil is just plain wrong. If it is, then all of the UN states that voted for those actions are also evil, which is most of the world. StuRat (talk) 02:13, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Stu Rat, Im not really interested in discussion on these subjects, but I presume that you are American and it fits well into thesis that Americans are not evil but just uninformed. There was no "massacre of civilians by Serbia" and Serbian civilian victims by NATO bombs (over 1000) and especially by Albanians during and after(to this day) the NATO intervention were much higher then all Albanian victims during the conflict altogether. Of course, bombing of Libya is very similar, I find it interesting that you dont know that leading peaceful nations of the world like Russia and China abstained from voting in UN Seczrity Council and later called for American bombings to stop, but your answer serves well to support the theory that Americans really do believe in what they are told, whatever its Cuba,Vietnam,Serbia,Iraq,Libya or any other country.

But like I said, Im not really interested in discussion since this is neither the right place not do I have the time needed to explain my question to those who dont understand it. I am marely interested to find out if theret is a book or a web site that explains this phenomenom of the most agressive country in the world and especially its ordinary citizens. I tried to compare it to Germans during Hitler rule, but its very different, since Germany had peaceful governemnts after that, like Willy Brant, unlike US.I highly doubt that any of us can answer that question here, its much deeper issue. I found a good article on this subject by American author Noam Chomsky and if anyone know where I can find out more, it would be much appriciated. --77.243.20.194 (talk) 02:35, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Note that China and Russia didn't vote against it. Why do you think that is ? And apparently the actions taken by the US weren't enough, since Gaddafi is again on the attack. The US has now passed control on to NATO, so you best blame all of them if you still have a problem. StuRat (talk) 05:02, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

By civilian massacres, I refer to the Srebrenica massacre, the Prijedor massacre, and Siege of Sarajevo. Now I must ask if you are evil or just ignorant. StuRat (talk) 05:21, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Do a search for "Marxist history of America" and you will find the justification for your point of view that you seek. After that, you can explore the other "peaceful nations" such as Russia (see invasions of Afghanistan and Chechnya, or earlier, the Kulaks) and China (Tibet, earlier the Cultural Revolution).Seaphoto^Talk 02:58, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Seaphoto, but I highly doubt that an American can answer my question. StuRat tried by claiming that "most of the world" voted for Serbia and Libya bombings, while actually UN Security Council refused to allow military interventions in Serbia and Iraq and as for Libya, only 10 countries voted for it. I appreciate very much Americans trying to answer my question, but its really impossible, since if Americans could answer my question, they wouldnt be widely hated all over the world. And I dont "seek point of view", I was marely asking for further info on which point of view is correct: that they are evil or that they are ignorant.

I personally have no opinion on this issue yet, otherwise I wouldnt have asked this question. --77.243.20.194 (talk) 03:06, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

If you want some insight into why America intervened in the Balkans, there is a bibliography attached to this article[19]; you might find some answers there, if your mind is open.Seaphoto^Talk 03:12, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

'77.243.20.194', there is another possibility here: that it is you that is ignorant. Or come to that, maybe we all are. I think there are a lot on negative things that can be seen in US foreign policy, but simplistic 'good' vs 'evil' arguments and/or accusations of 'ignorance' are unlikely to throw much light on the issue. But then I strongly suspect that you weren't actually looking for answers, but instead looking for an opportunity to spout your own bias - in spite of your denials, you seem to have your mind made up. If you really want to learn about such issues, I'd suggest you start by ditching your own assumptions. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:19, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

viewpoints

...man has dominated man to his injury. — Book of Ecclesiastes 8:9 You may be interested in the Biblical answer to such mental predicaments. When Jesus preached about God's Kingdom he was referring to a sovereign government in Heaven. Daniel 2:44 seems to say that this Kingdom of God is an enemy of the kingdoms of Earth. Additionally, John 17:16 reifies this assertion that God's Kingdom is opposite of the kingdoms of the Earth. Schyler (one language) 03:20, 2 April 2011 (UTC) I see absolutely no relevance to the OP's question in �what you've posted. If you are going to suggest the Bible is useful for something, please make it pretty clear why. Otherwise it looks like off-topic preaching, which is frankly not appropriate here, whatever the religion. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:32, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

I think you should look at Srebrenica massacre, Siege of Sarajevo, List of massacres in the Kosovo War, and War rape#Former Yugoslavia to begin with. Ordinary Americans were presented with the impression that the Serbian government was working with its paramilitary allies in adjoining former Yugoslav republics to commit atrocities on a regular basis. Now, I understand that Serbia was not the only guilty party in the conflict, and that America's perspective was skewed by various factors. For example, bear in mind that by and large the reporters of America's "free press" used to report the news by booking a room in a hotel close to the U.S. embassy in the capital, spending the time getting drunk, talking to friends, and occasionally pointing a camera out the window if anything made noise. Unfortunately for the Serbians, they chose to besiege Sarajevo for four years - making a bad impression - and the fact that the U.S. had just been watching Olympics sporting events there didn't help either. Also consider that Serbia was considered a natural ally to Russia, which the U.S. at the time put a huge priority on trying to break apart and weaken. Now I suspect that despite all such biases, there really was something rotten in Serbia against which some sort of military action could be justified; but I could certainly believe that the U.S. response could have been excessive, poorly aimed and not well coordinated with potential allies. Wnt (talk) 05:51, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Harold Pinter's highly controversial Nobel Lecture, "Art, Truth and Politics", may be of interest to the questioner. It can be viewed here. At 10:40, Pinter changes the subject rather abruptly, from reflections on his own work, to his opinion on American foreign policy:

Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory [of the artist] since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

In the remaining 36 minutes, Pinter harshly criticises the United States for military aggression and their support of "every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War", and ironically praises US politicians for their use of political language to provide "the American people" with a "truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance."

You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable.

Manipulation of public opinion to justify violence, or make people believe that it didn't happen, is of course an art that politicians of many nationalities (Serbian politicians included) excel in. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 11:51, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Intelligent people will sometimes disagree on whether things are justified. Entire nations will sometimes see things differently. The basic answer is that most (but not all) Americans see these things differently than you do. Now the question seems to be, do we see it wrongly and you see it correctly, or vice versa? Because that will explain who is ignorant and who is not.

"Evil" doesn't come into it in a way I can see. There are sometimes some conflicts in values, and perhaps you deem it correct to make moralistic judgments about them. But I think we'd find that most of us have essentially similar values when it comes to wars and killing — we think they are justified if done in the service of a higher cause we believe in, we think they are unjustified if done just for the sake of enriching people or asserting brute power. The question is whether we agree on the facts behind these wars. I think all sides in such a debate should acknowledge up front that unless they do seriously spend time investigating said facts (rather than just repeating whatever they've heard from friends or their local media), that they probably know less about it than they think they do. One of the nice things about Wikipedia is that, on the whole, for articles where serious editing has taken place, you get a broad description of numerous points of view, backed up and attributed quite specifically. That's gives some considerable advantage over relying on one set of viewpoints, in my opinion. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:35, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

To the OP, for what it's worth, I'm an American who has created a few articles on Serbian royals. I did not support the US bombing against Serbia. However, I met a Kosovan man of Albanian origin who told me some horrific tales of Serbian atrocities committed against Albanians of all ages and both sexes. Do I believe all Serbs are evil? Of course not, just like I am not "evil" because my nation has attacked other nations. It is the archaic concept of War itself that is evil.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 12:04, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

This is possibly a troll thread (lines such as "respected American intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore" can be read as irony or naiveté). In case the question is genuine, check out the book War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning for one take on the topic. —Kevin Myers 13:52, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

The problem with the question is that the questioner has not considered the fact that other people may disagree with him as to whether the military actions in question were justifiable. People can legitimately disagree as to whether U.S. military action in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya was right or wrong. But it's not like Clinton, Bush and Obama were James Bond-movie villains cackling evilly while plotting to kill thousands for fun. The U.S. intervened in Kosovo because there had been a lot of criticism over the country's failure to intervene in Bosnia and the White House feared another Srebrenica massacre. The Libyan intervention, whether you agree with it or not, is clearly based either on Western leaders' humanitarian concerns or the fear of what would happen to themselves politically if Gadhafi were to massacre thousands of people while the Western leaders did nothing. Afghanistan was a response to 9/11, and there is clearly concern about what would happen to the people if we were to leave. I think instead of ruminating on whether Americans are evil, the questioner should read up on the political background of the decisions to intervene militarily in these situations. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 01:18, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Many western leaders have in mind Edmund Burke's axiom; "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing". 1930s Germany is an example where refraining from action military by the western powers may have led to a worse evil. It is often postulated that a firm military response by Britain and France to the Remilitarization of the Rhineland would have limited Hitler's ambition[20]. Maybe. Alansplodge (talk) 11:44, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Shirer discusses this at length. The French made no move to stop the German Army from entering the Rhineland with only two divisions.

The section title is in fact ironically correct - a great deal of evil is indeed undertaken by people who are uniformed (in uniform) at the time. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 12:13, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

memorials to quake victims

By any chance will there be memorials built for the victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the 2010 Chile earthquake, and the 2011 Sendai earthquake? The reason I'm asking is I'd be more than happy to donate some money to help build them. Please let me know where I can do so. Thank you.24.90.204.234 (talk) 07:24, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

All I can say is, for the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995, there are two annual memorials, but nothing 'concrete' like a statue or anything. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 17:07, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Looking for a (probably jewish) small town in volin (Ukraine)

The town`s name in yiddish is "וויזשווע", and its pronunciation is something close to "vaizshva". I need any kind of information you may have about the exact location, name or anything else about the town. Thanks in advance! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.130.108.164 (talk) 18:10, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Most likely Vyshnivets, which is today part of Ternopil Oblast, but parts of Ternopil were once historically part of Volyn (known today as Volhynia). There's also a Vyshneve, but that is nearby to Kiev, which does not appear to be part of any current or historical definition of Volhynia. The village you are looking for is most likely Vyshnivets, since that name also appears on a list of Jewish settlements in the Ukraine, seeList_of_shtetls#.C2.A0Ukraine. --Jayron32 20:25, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Also found Vyshnivchyk in Ternopil and a "Stara Vyzhivka"(no article at en.wikipedia, but found it at List_of_urban-type_settlements_in_Ukraine_by_subdivision) in Volyn Oblast. Maybe one of those as well. --Jayron32 20:31, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

The Shtetl Seeker is a good resource for this sort of thing. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:52, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't even know if it exists anymore; my grand-grand-grandfather lived there. Vyshnivets does fit the description. thanks a lot! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.130.123.99 (talk) 12:53, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

What would be the correct name for the 1706 financier Thomas Allen of London?

Do we have an article on this Thomas Allen? Apparently he had an association with William Talbot, the Bishop of Oxford.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 21:07, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

We have an article about his father; Sir Thomas Allen, 1st Baronet, who died in 1690. There is no article about Sir Thomas Allen, 2nd Baronet as yet. Was he notable for anything? Alansplodge (talk) 21:52, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

April 3

Retired Air Force officers say UFOs turned off nukes

I tried to ask about this at the Science Desk[21] without much luck, but it occurred to me that I'm actually much more interested in the journalism aspects of this story. And as I've been reading more, my questions have evolved into more of a humanities bent, so I'm going to try again here.

Last September, several retired USAF officials told the National Press Club that they had witnessed nuclear ICBMs deactivating at the same time that UFOs were being reported above ground at the same facilities, and had compiled at least 120 such reports. Those officials included Bruce Fenstermacher, a former USAF nuclear missile launch officer, Charles Halt, USAF Col. Ret., a former deputy base commander, Robert Jamison, a former USAF nuclear missile targeting officer, Jerome Nelson, a former USAF nuclear missile launch officer, Robert Salas, a former USAF nuclear missile launch officer, Patrick McDonough, a former USAF nuclear missile site geodetic surveyor, and Dwynne Arneson, USAF Lt.Col., a retired communications center officer. Here is video, reports from CBS News, the Socio-Economics History Blog, a VeteransToday.com discussion site, and excerpts from one of the organizers of the National Press Club event.

My current question is very simple: Has anyone come forward to question the credibility, integrity, trustworthiness, or any other aspects of the officers who have reported these incidents? I am also interested in people's personal evaluations of these reports. 99.2.149.161 (talk) 02:14, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually, there are two different questions regarding 'credibility' here. Firstly there is that of the officers themselves. I've no reason to think that they would lie about events they believed had occurred, though that isn't actually evidence that such events occurred in the way they reported them. More significantly though, there is the issue of the credibility of those who gather 'evidence' regarding isolated events in order to 'prove' some wild theory regarding UFOs etc. Such persons are usually actively searching evidence for the very 'theory' they are trying to prove - and ignoring any evidence to the contrary when it suits them. They generally believe in the theory before they gather evidence - hardly an objective approach. So the answer you got from the science desk is probably appropriate regarding the 'factuality' of such phenomena. As a social phenomenon, one could look at the subject in other terms, and it would probably increase understanding to draw parallels, as others have before, with beliefs in fairies, spirits and the like - they are 'real', but as a social/psychological phenomenon rather than a material one. Probably not the answer you were looking for, but the best you are likely to get. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:37, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Another problem is with those sources. YouTube videos and blogs are not regarded as reliable sources for Wikipedia. The only one with any value is the CBS news link, and unfortunately, it's full of links to blogs too. So we are left with some statements by ex-service folks 30 years after the alleged incidents, at an event organised by a "UFO researcher". (What qualifications do you need to claim that title?) Obviously it cannot be further investigated because of both the military secrecy and time barriers. Hardly compelling evidence. It would be interesting to hear from other people who were at those bases at the time. HiLo48 (talk) 03:02, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I think it's important to distinguish between evidence of a UFO and missile shutdown versus an extraterrestrial origin for the craft. For example, nuclear weapons have elaborate safeguards. Maybe other country drifted a balloon over the base with the right equipment to send a bunch of random missile codes, so the missiles locked out additional login attempts. (I have no evidence for that, but I daresay no one has evidence those craft came from another planet either) Wnt (talk) 05:22, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

As my father used to say "Any FO is U until it is I". They may have been aircraft developed in secret by another (or the same!) country. I remember seeing a UK documentary on this subject, with someone who worked for one of the UK aircraft builders claiming that they developed and tested a "flying saucer" type of aircraft, but because it caused panic when it flew over built-up areas, they didn't continue development. --TammyMoet (talk) 09:25, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

That's right, Tammy. There's no need to assume extraterrestrial visitation, when a much more obvious explanation is available and is recommended by Occam's Razor: these craft are flown by Earth-dwelling non-human sentient creatures. When they say "We are not alone", they should be looking for the "others" right here in our own backyard. Literally. Maybe humans are the latecomers to planet Earth; maybe we're the real aliens here. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 10:23, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Help finding a source document

I'm trying to find the source document for some information on the wiki page for Cleopatra VII. Under the sub-heading, "Assassination of Pompey," there doesn't seem to be a reference number for the source document. Any help would be appreciated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Boydgarrett (talk • contribs) 02:44, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

That section has no footnotes, so there is no direct inline citation for it. Cross checking the Pompey article, however, turns up several footnotes in the section "Civil War and assassination". Maybe you can get more information in those sources... --Jayron32 04:51, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Accessory to murder

Consider the following scenario: someone is fatally stabbed. As he is dying, he assists the person who stabbed him in escaping justice. Does that make him an accessory after the fact to his own murder? --Carnildo (talk) 04:40, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

It depends on what the local authorities charge him with; if there is no formal charge no legal crime has occured. I am not aware of many modern western democracies that charge corpses with crimes, however. Furthermore, since he cannot stand trial (being dead), he cannot be convicted of the crime, so legally he didn't commit it. --Jayron32 04:48, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

You can't charge a dead man with a crime, for various reasons. Charles Whitman, for example, probably would have bent sent to Old Sparky for his shooting rampage, but he was never tried for that crime, having been gunned down by the police. Kenneth Lay was convicted in the Enron thing, but he died before the appeal process could get going, so the conviction was vacated. The OP's scenario sounds strange, but I wouldn't rule it out in the case of the Mafia, for example. Vincent Gigante (acting on the orders of Vito Genovese) tried unsuccessfully to put a bullet through Frank Costello's head, but in Gigante's trial, Costello refused to identify Gigante, claiming he couldn't see who shot him, and Gigante was acquitted. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:00, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Whitman's article has a detail new to me, which is that he apparently suffered from glioblastoma, which (per that article) apparently has a median survival time of 3 months untreated, or 1-2 years with treatment. So even in Texas, and even in 1966, I'm not sure he'd have lived long enough to be executed. --Trovatore (talk) 09:46, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

That's one theory as to why he did it, i.e. that he was in some sense not responsible for his actions. We'll never know, since he was taken down. But the point is that he was never charged with anything, because he was dead. He was merely reported as the killer. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:09, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I always thought that not trying dead people causes certain problems:

1) Can lead to lazy police work. That is, they can just blame an innocent dead guy for a crime and not worry about who actually committed it, since their accusation will never have to hold up in court.

2) The family of the deceased person accused of murder might like their day in court, to defend his name, but never get it.

3) Other people involved in the crime may go free. For example, if the deceased was a hit man, the person who hired him may never be determined. A trial wouldn't guarantee that they would be, but evidence needed for the jury would likely need to include this. StuRat (talk) 18:07, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Legal online gambling owner American Rick Salomon despite illegal in US?

Mr. Salomon is described as being an "online gambling website owner", and as far as I am aware has not been arrested etc regarding this. Yet online gambling is illegal in the US. How is this discrepancy explained? Thanks 92.15.9.102 (talk) 12:11, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Maybe his servers are in Mexico, or Brazil, or...... HiLo48 (talk) 12:13, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm doubtful the location of the servers would matter to the US law if his customers are in the US. 92.15.9.102 (talk) 12:26, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Your doubt on the matter does not change the reality of the law: It is not illegal for U.S. citizens or residents to own online gambling businesses outside of the U.S. --Jayron32 12:47, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

If that is true, then why is Mr Saloman in the clear while Party Gaming had to pay a big fine and close down US operations, and have not resumed it again either? See PartyGaming#U.S._legislation. I believe the principal, and probably other senior staff, was or is an American. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 13:45, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Can one access his gambling site from the U.S.? Bielle (talk) 17:59, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

鄧蔭南

What's the proper romanisation for the name? Neither Deng Yinnan nor Teng Yin-nan returned any results. Thanks. Kayau Voting IS evil 12:31, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

The 7th result down on this Google search has 'dengyinnan' in the search result, but not on the page itself when you click on it. The page is from a server in China. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 12:47, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

And this confirms it. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 12:49, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

So Deng Yin'nan seems appropriate. Thanks! Kayau Voting IS evil 14:30, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Note that you can actually take that text and mark it up like this: 鄧蔭南 and as you see, each hanzi links to its entry in Wiktionary. I wish we had better string functions enabled so we could have a simple template to mark text up this way. With WP:POPUPS enabled you should even be able to read the pronunciation without opening each page, I think. If you follow the links, they have that the Mandarin pronunciation/pinyin is dèng, yīn or yìn, nán or nā. True, that isn't entirely helpful by itself (you still need to figure out the right pronunciation for the sense in which it is used), but it does provide extra information. It looks like Wiktionary still needs t work on breaking down the pronunciations according to meaning. Wnt (talk) 17:09, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

This question belongs on the Language Ref Desk. StuRat (talk) 17:56, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

AV voting - why count the 2nd. choices of the least popular candidate's votes only?

From the presentation here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12892836 it is shown that if no candidate gets over 50%, then only the voters of the least popular candidate have their second choice votes used instead. 1) Would it ever make any difference to the eventual outcome if voters for all but the most popular candidate had their second-choice votes counted all in one go? 2) Is it unfair on voters who voted neither for the most popular candidate, nor for the least popular candidate, as their second choice votes are ignored? Thanks 92.15.2.39 (talk) 14:13, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Most of the time, there will be two or possibly three candidates left at the end - let's just assume there are two for a second. Yes, those two could end up different because of second preference votes from eliminated parties. However, in your post, you say "all but the most popular candidate", which isn't how AV works; there are always two or more people left at the end - the others are eliminated, and cannot win (in your case, the person with the most votes wins automatically - in other words, like first past the post). If you meant "top two" then yes, that could be a plausible (if different from AV) system:

Consider candidates A, B, C, D and E who get {4,3,2,1,1} votes. In your system, both C, D and E's 2nd preferences are simultaneously counted, ergo we have their combined 4 second preferences distributed between A and B. (You haven't said what would happen to second preferences for C, D, E or another not-top-two[sic] candidate.) Under AV, E would first be eliminated; let's say to C. Then D, also to C; that leaves A B and C with {4,3,4}; in other words B would now be eliminated and C could easily win - who under your system would have been eliminated in the single round.

However, I note this example with caution because your idea of eliminating all but the top one doesn't make sense in the context of AV - the second preference only being considered after your first preference candidate has been eliminated. On your second point, the fact is AV supporters would say that all votes cast under first past the post which aren't for the eventual winner are "ignored", and thus under AV more of them are counted. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 14:55, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Sorry I don't understand your answer. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 15:04, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

To answer question 2 shortly, no it doesn't matter. If ballots were counted eliminating the last person at each round eventually you would get down to two candidates. If one of them got past 50% of the votes some of the way, there is no way that the other person could beat them. As for your first question, it would make the system nonsensical. If everyone except the leader's second preference was counted, then nobody else's first preference was counted. The idea behind the system is that in the end everyone's vote will count for either the most or second most successful candidate. So if you vote for the loser, your vote will end up being for your second preference, unless they get eliminated, in which case your third, etc. etc. While it's true they stop the counting when someone gets to 50%, that's only because it is now impossible to beat them —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.171.192.209 (talk) 15:12, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Intially there will be one candidate who has the most 1st. choice votes (ignoring ties for the sake of arguement). If they do not have more than 50% of the votes, then wouldnt it be fairer to count the 2nd choice votes of all the voters who did not vote for the 1st choice candidate? Or wouldnt this make any difference? It just seems peculiar that on the 2nd round, its only the votes from the least popular candidate (which may be some extreme party) that are given a very big weight in deciding the fate of the most popular candidates. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 15:37, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict wiith 124, 92) Let's look at an actual example somewhat along the lines of what you describe: Burlington, Vermont mayoral election, 2009,[22]. Things are a bit confusing because several candidates are dropped in the first round, but this is done because it's mathematically inevitable that this will happen. If you don't agree, you can treat it as if the lowest place candidate was dropped in a second round each time, and you'll arrive at exactly the same results. Essentially, a candidate (Andy Montroll) who would have beat any of the other candidates in a head to head race (Condorcet criterion) lost. This is largely because those who voted for the second place candidate (Kurt Wright) would have preferred the third place winner (Andy Montroll) over the first place winner, Bob Kiss. This may seem a bit unfair to those who voted for Wright. In my opinion, the system still worked well, in that the person who would have won under a First-past-the-post voting system with less than 1/3 if the vote (because his opponents were split between several similar candidates: see Independence of clones criterion) lost. However, the voters disagreed, and voted to repeal IRV (AKA AV) in 2010. In favor of a Two-round system where only 40% of the vote's needed to avoid a runoff. What's really facinating is that under this system, the same candidate would have won the election! Moral: voters are stupid..

So yes, occasionally AV/IRV can be "unfair" to those who vote for a losing candidate who's not last. However, this isn't a reason to keep your silly First-Past-The-Post system (which,in some senses, is unfair to everyone who votes for a losing candidate when no majority is reached, while IRV/AV is unfair only occasionally, in very specific circumstances). If you really want to avoid these problems, demand the Schulze method, which many nerds (see Schulze_method#Use_of_the_Schulze_method) consider to be superior.

There are a lot of smart people who have though long and hard about what the advantages and disadvantages of different voting systems are. See Single-winner voting system. IRV/AV is better than Plurality voting system, including the First-Past-The-Post system used in the UK, by nearly any criterion. There are other methods that are even better than IRV according to certain criteria, but in voting theory, it's impossible to create any system that's perfect: see Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem. But just because no system's perfect doesn't mean you should stick with a system that's clearly inferior </soapbox>. Buddy431 (talk) 15:43, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Why is it the 2nd. choice votes from the least popular candidate rather than the 2nd choice votes from the second most popular candidate that are counted? Wouldnt that give more people an input and therefore be fairer? Why does the process go in one direction rather than the other? 92.15.2.39 (talk) 15:56, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately the good information in Buddy's answer is wrapped up in some anti-FPTP bias for some reason. Anyway, OP: you can't count all the other candidate's second preferences, because that can't work. If you did that, you'd not get any narrowing of the field, except for some extra votes the leading candidate gets. We stop counting their first votes, and then add their second votes - in parallel to how AV works, where the people who voted for the lowest candidates's first votes are discarded. In fact, the sense of narrowing the field is important. Before any candidate's votes are split among the others with their second preference, they are formally eliminated - and can't win. The lowest candidate is eliminated first because they are furthest from 'winning' and so eliminating them is seen as fairer (and is undoubtedly so). Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 16:02, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

What sort of system would you get if you just elected the candidate who had the lowest average rank on all the voters lists? That would seem to be a better way of doing it than AV, as everyone's vote would count and nobodys vote would be ignored. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 16:17, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

It would strongly encourage tactical voting where people don't vote for what they really prefer. Suppose there are three candidates and a voter is convinced that only A and B have a real chance to win. Then suppose the voter prefers A over B, and B over C. Many voters in this situation would vote ACB, because ABC would give B a better chance to beat A. If all voters who prefer A or B places the other of them last for tactical reasons then the result could end up a surprise win for C even if a large majority of voters actually prefer both A and B over C. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:39, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

If people are being dishonest about what they put down on their voting forms, then they've only got themselves to blame. If I like A but actually vote for B, then I cannot complain if B gets elected. So perhaps the system encourages honesty. It seems a better system than ignoring a large proportion of people's votes, as FPTP or AV seem to do. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 17:32, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't think you understand the situation I described. There, somebody who likes A will of course vote A first, but if they vote B second then it risks preventing their first choice A from being elected. My last part about C winning was a more theoretical situation. I think a lot of people who honestly voted ABC would be rightfully upset if their second vote B prevented their first vote A from winning. Many of them will realize this in advance and therefore vote ACB instead. This means the system would encourage dishonesty and not honesty. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:51, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

It seems preferable to FPTP where you never even vote for your preferred candidate if you think they are unpopular. I would hope in the scenario you have outlined that at least you get your second choice. Which system gives the least proportion of disgruntled voters? I imagine it is impossible to have no disgruntled voters, unless someone gets 100% of the vore. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 18:04, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, the OP would seem to allow not expressing additional preferences, thereby making it a "bullet vote"; this isn't all preferable. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 17:53, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Never said that. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 18:06, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I was merely going off "Then simply ignore the vote boxes that the voter has not filled in.", which does seem to suggest I can just have my first preference and no other preferences. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 18:18, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Sorry I misread your comment. But even under AV you don't have to fill in all the boxes on your voting form, if you want you could just fill in one box. I don't see that its any problem. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 18:26, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

The other problem with that system is that every voter has to express a complete set of preferences. In real life, there might be one or tow they like the look of, one or two they don't, but lots of people (for example independents) they can't rank. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 16:48, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Then simply ignore the vote boxes that the voter has not filled in. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 17:27, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure exactly what method 92.15 is talking about, but it sounds like he's advocating some sort of Borda count. The Borda count is not an inherently bad way of voting, and it is used used politically in a few places. As PrimeHunter mentions, the Borda method strongly encourages tactical voting, to a greater extent than IRV or even plurality voting. Borda count is, in some senses, more likely to lead to a candidate who, overall, everyone is generally OK with, rather than a candidate who the majority like, but a large minority dislike, as can occur in IRV. That's still better then FPTP, where you can elect a candidate who only a minority like, and a moderate majority dislike. Borda count also encourages parties with similar ideologies to field as many candidates as possible, as this makes it much more likely that one of them will win. This problem is largely absent in IRV/AV, and the opposite problem occurs in FPTP (where candidates with similar ideologies hurt each other). Buddy431 (talk) 17:19, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

"Borda count is, in some senses, more likely to lead to a candidate who, overall, everyone is generally OK with" - great, that's what we want! 92.15.2.39 (talk) 17:27, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

So is there any consensus on the best voting system to use? And I'm curious, is it possible to say which voting scheme works best with similar artificial intelligence decision-making systems? 92.15.2.39 (talk) 17:27, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

No, because there are differing aims of the system. We don't know which result is the right one. For example, Buddy mentions a case where the result changed - the system he praises for not electing someone on a third of the vote is the same one I'd criticise for not electing someone with a third of the vote. You suggest that tactical voting is a personal issue, but this isn't the case. The problem with tactical voting is that often, a candidate who no-one wanted gets in, and chances are they don't want them is related to how good a job they'd do - for example fringe candidates. That's going to affect everyone, not just those making the tactical vote. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 17:42, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Exactly: no voting system is perfect. And that's not just an empirical observation, but a mathematical fact: Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem (edit: and Arrow's impossibility theorem). And yet, I will reiterate that a voting system that has gained wide support among smart people is the Schulze method. It is complicated and hard to understand, which makes it undesirable to many voting populations. It would probably never be used by choice by the masses. However, mathematically, it is a very good voting system, precluding many of the problems that can occur with Plurality (FPTP), IRV, and Borda methods. People who tend to have strong mathematical and computer skills (and who actually think about such things) tend prefer it. It's what we use at the Wikimedia Foundation [23]. It's what Debian Project uses [24]. It still has some susceptibility to tactical voting, but not as much (and not as obviously) as other methods, especially FPTP and Borda count. Obviously, I'm biased, in that I think smart, tech savvy people are better able to judge the merits of different voting systems than the general population. Buddy431 (talk) 18:10, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

The Borda system is used by a lot of universities according to its article, so its what the intelligent prefer. I've begun to think that the AV system is undesirable, because it puts your votes through a sort of arbitrary spagethi machine. The Borda system seems preferable to AV. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 18:31, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

The Borda system works well when people vote in good faith, truly ranking candidates in their order of preference. It works well for things where there are many good, truly differentiated candidates, and only one can win, as in sports trophies (i.e. Heisman Trophy [25]) and Eurovision Song Contest. Notice that in many of these examples, the votes are publicly known, which can discourage things like burying second choice candidates under obviously weaker rivals. It works less well when there are many voters with secret ballots (who are less likely to vote their genuine choices), or when it is easy for very similar candidates to enter the race to skew the results (Strategic nomination). In my opinion, there are good reasons why it is used frequently for sports trophies, but infrequently in politics. Buddy431 (talk) 18:56, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

A side comment about multiple-office elections and STV

While this is probably very tangential to the AV/IRV problems in a single-office election, it might just be worth pointing out (or recalling) that in a multiple-office election conducted under systems like the Single Transferable Vote (for example, the recent Irish general election where each single constituency returned four or five members of the Dáil Eireann; see http://www.rte.ie/news/election2011/prstvlogic.html), lesser preferences on winning candidates' ballots can be counted once those winning candidates have reached the qualifying minimum "quota" for election. (Some methods of counting look only at the ballots above that quota; the fairest systems look at the lesser preferences on all the ballots and distribute a proportionate "excess" fraction to each remaining candidate; others look only at a proportionate random selection of all ballots cast for a winning candidate.) In general, so long as there are still these "excess" second preferences to be distributed, none of the remaining candidates is eliminated. —— Shakescene (talk) 17:33, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Tiananmen Square vs. Libya

When the Chinese government slaughtered protesters in Tiananmen Square, the protests died out. When Gaddafi tried the same thing in Libya, why did the protests expand instead? --70.244.234.128 (talk) 14:27, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

We can only guess, but mine would be that, for a start, where Libya was concerned, there were a number of population centres simultaneously involved in the protests, and not just one square in the middle of a city, surrounded by troops, as was the case in Tiananmen. To be sure, protests were going on in other parts of China at the time of Tiananmen, but they were nowhere near as big as the one in Tiananmen, which is why it got practically all of the coverage. Another reason would be that, people had been mentioning a possible repeat of Tiananmen during the protests in Egypt only weeks before (though thankfully it never happened), and I would guess that people in Libya were prepared for it - unlike the unfortunate protesters in Tiananmen. Beyond my guessing here, I can only speculate. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 15:00, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

In Libya the rebels had access to both weapons and military support from other nations. None of these were available in China. StuRat (talk) 17:55, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Home CCTV

As I've had various things stolen from my front garden recently, I'm considering installing some kind of time-lapse camera overlooking it. This would as a side effect photograph anyone passing on the pavement at the time the photos were taken.

Where can I find out about what rules etc that I need to abide by in these circumstances, such as a "You're on CCTV" notice? Thanks 92.15.2.39 (talk) 15:15, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

It depends on what country (or U.S. state) you're located in? -- AnonMoos (talk) 15:25, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Sorry I forgot to add that I am in the UK. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 15:28, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I am pretty sure that any supplier of CCTVs in the UK would know what you'd need to do. I'll look around here and on the web for relevant laws for you, but in the meantime I would suggest asking your supplier.--KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 15:44, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't know how reliable this source is, but this came from googling 'UK CCTV law home' (which, incedentally, tried to autofill to 'UK CCTV law workplace', so you might want to check that out too). Other links from my search are Home CCTV Law and a government one. If you need more than internet links, then I would suggest contacting your local council, as they are bound to know. Best of luck! --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 15:50, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. One of the links says I can use up to three cameras and I don't even need to put up a sign or do anything else. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 17:16, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

If those items are stolen at night, a motion detector that turns a light on might be more effective at preventing theft. Of course, if your goal is to catch the thieves, then a camera is needed, although you may not recognize them in the video. StuRat (talk) 17:52, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm already dazzled by the bright street lighting all night, so more isnt needed thanks. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 17:55, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

is there such a thing as

caring so much for a person that you kill yourself to protect that person from yourself? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.189.219.105 (talk) 16:24, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes. If you would like a broad example, you can read about the samurai in Japan, who were usually more than willing to die for their masters. In an individual case, Masuda Sayo's brother committed suicide so Sayo wouldn't have to prostitute herself to pay for his TB treatment (it's obscure, I know, but I'm planning on taking a crack at our article on Autobiography of a Geisha). There are many examples throughout history. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:01, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

"Recently surfaced manuscripts" of Ramon Llull

How did could documents from around 1300 only become known in the last few years? Where had they been for the last seven hundred years? The article does not seem to say. Thanks 92.15.2.39 (talk) 17:53, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't know about Llull specifically (or how "recent" this discovery was), but it's not uncommon to find new manuscripts. Sometimes they aren't labelled and are bound with unrelated texts. Sometimes they're in a national library collection but have been mislabelled or lost in the archives. Sometimes they've made their way into a private library and the owner doesn't realize what's there. In this case, the manuscripts were presumably known in the Middle Ages, and were lost later; maybe they weren't very interesting to later medieval or Renaissance people (and therefore were not copied by hand), or early printers (election theory?! That's boring), or maybe they were misplaced during a revolution or war. I'm just randomly speculating, but it's not unusual. Adam Bishop (talk) 18:53, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Lincoln, Civil War and Slavery

So, the Southern states chose to secede, because they were afraid Lincoln would abolish slavery, or so most people would say. (First question, is this accurate?) My main question is: if Lincoln were to decide to do so on the day of his inauguration (he wouldn't have tried, I assume, but let's suppose), and the Southern states tried to block him through purely legal means, could he have succeeded? Specifically, did he have the votes in both houses? If he did, could he have passed some law abolishing slavery that would be valid under the Constitution? I assume he couldn't have possibly got a constitutional amendment with Southern states opposed. And more broadly, why did the leaders of Southern states not try to oppose him legally first? --99.113.32.198 (talk) 17:57, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Without the War, Lincoln could not have abolished slavery by proclamation... What allowed him to issue the Emancipation Proclamation was the fact that the southern states were in open rebellion, and were technically under Marshal Law (and as Commander in Chief, Lincoln defined that law). And lets not forget that the EP only applied to rebel states ... it did not free the slaves in Maryland and the other slave States that stayed with the Union. Even then, A lot of people thought he was over stepping his authority in issuing it.

But to examine your hypothetical where there is no war... The Republicans did have a small majority in the House of Representatives, so I suppose it would be conceivable that a bill to abolish slavery might have been proposed and passed in the House. However, it definitely would not have passed in the Senate (where pro-slavery Democrats held the majority) and so would not have become Law. It never would have reached Lincoln's desk for his signature as President. The debate would have been heated, and would have affected subsequent elections... but probably with no real change... Abolition minded Republicans might have continued to gain seats in the House as the Northern States grew in population... but the balance in the Senate would probably not have changed much. As long as the Southern Senators could block any abolition bill, the situation would not have changed. Blueboar (talk) 18:39, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

That's what I thought too. So wouldn't the Southern leaders see this too? --99.113.32.198 (talk) 18:47, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

The South definitely seceded primarily because they were afraid Lincoln would abolish slavery, yes. The wrapped it up in the veneer of "state's rights" and all that, but slavery was the major issue they were worried about, and they were pretty clear about that at the time. In retrospect many have chosen to under-emphasize that aspect of things, but if you read their own reasons for secession, they were abundantly clear about slavery.

Interestingly, legal means were pursued by many — and probably would have succeeded if the South had not seceded. See, e.g., the Corwin Amendment. It is unclear to me exactly why they abandoned this route so early (as you point out, there is really a very slim chance that an anti-slavery amendment would have been able to get 2/3rds majority). Two obvious possibilities: 1. they were worried that if they waited too long, they'd lose some sort of military advantage (better to do it before Lincoln could start his presidency), 2. Those who were organizing the secession were too hot-headed to wait and compromise and bargain. But I don't know of either of those are really defensible theses. I do think we have adequate evidence from modern times that once people get crazy political ideas in their heads regarding how "evil" a given President might be, they are willing to run with them, no matter what the facts may indicates, and even if ultimately to their own disadvantage. But this is just an observation. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:52, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, that's very helpful. I'd like to point out that in addition to 2/3 requirement for the amendment, there's also 3/4 of states' legislatures requirement, which would simply make it completely impossible, short of creating a bunch of small states for the purpose:) --99.113.32.198 (talk) 19:01, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

amount of grain used to produce a kilo of beef and economics

Hi, you always hear that it takes about 16 kilos of grain to produce a kilo of beef, which we normally think of as a science question, but isn't it rather an economics one? The (average) cost of a kilo of beef doesn't look to me (when I visit the supermarket) too much like 16 times the cost of a kilo of flour, so if it were taking 16 kilos of grain for each of those kilos of beef, surely the farmers would do better to sell the grain as flour. I know there's more to it than that, because the real determinant for the farmer is the market cost of the thing he sells to another firm, minus the production cost, with something more factored in for the delay in growing a cow (if it's not baby beef, at least). Still, these things look simple enough, and I would think that the trouble of growing grain, then feeding it unprocessed to cows, then looking after the cows must be greater (hence more expensive) than just growing grain and milling it into flour. Hence surely the hidden factors would be on the "pro-flour" side of the balance sheet, one would think. What of this argument? What is the difference in profitability for a kilo of flour and a kilo of beef, and does this translate correctly into the cost to the consumer, or is there some form of inefficiency clouding the market in some countries? I'm in Australia, but interested in what happens elsewhere, also. Many thanks, It's been emotional (talk) 18:01, 3 April 2011 (UTC)